Mother Teresa, who as the saint of Kolkata's slums, epitomized campassion and charity, is not only a treasure that Kolkata cherishes. Far away in Europe, Macedonia, wants a part of her too.And it will get it.
The foreign minister of Macedonia, Antonio Milososki, was in India last week for a couple of important things - certainly to bond with India on a diplomatic level, but more important, to oversee the transfer of a Mother Teresa relic.
A part of Mother Teresa -- some say her hand -- will be transported to Macedonia to be placed in her birthplace, Skopje, as a relic in a commemorative house that the government there has just built for her, said Milososki.
The transfer has been done under established traditions closely supervised by the Roman Catholic Church, Milososki said.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje on August 27, 1910, when Macedonia was still under the Ottoman Empire. But at 18, she left home to join the Loreto Sisters and in 1931 she arrived in Calcutta.
By 1948, she took special permission to work in the slums of Calcutta and lived and worked there till her death on September 5, 1997. She started her own order in 1980, Missionaries of Charity.
She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and the Bharat Ratna in 1980. She was one of two persons to become an honorary citizen of the US in her lifetime as well as featuring on a postage stamp while still alive.
But with a part of her body to be taken to Macedonia soon, in her birthplace, the government there hopes to turn Skopje into a place of pilgrimage. Mother Teresa is already on what is being called a fast track to sainthood in the Catholic Church.
If she attains sainthood, it's likely that other churches would also want a part of her body in their reliquaries.
In a way it's like having the embalmed body of St Francis Xavier, whose body is embalmed in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa and is a huge draw for tourists and pilgrims alike.
The right forearm, which Xavier used to bless and baptize his converts, was detached in 1614 and is displayed since in a silver reliquary at a Jesuit church in Rome.
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(Source: GCNN)
Just a personal view - I know relics within the Church have always been there.
ReplyDeleteIt is one thing to think of the "total remains" doing a world tour to places of Pilgrimage where what remains of the body stays together. Also if only partial remains are available from Saints from bygone years being in different Churches scattered throughout the world.
However the thoughts of Mother Theresa whom we all remember in our lifetime having her body divided up and transported around the world to places of Pilgrimage etc., just seems cruel and uncaring to her fairly recent death and memory.
It is like the vultures were in a circle overhead and I know it is a totally personal view but to me it is distasteful.
This is totally sick. The body should be treated with respect in death not butchered up and posted all over the world to generate cash flow.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree with previous poster. I find the whole business grotesque and believe it panders to superstition, the enemy of true religion.
ReplyDeleteLET HER REST IN (one) PIECE!!
ReplyDeleteI was the first to post above and glad to see that so far 3 others agree with me.
ReplyDeleteThis really proves the sickness of abuse within the Church.
This is another form of abuse the total disrespect for Mother Theresa to treat her body in this way after death and use it as yet another (sick) cash generating machine for the Church.
You hear of uneducated wild tribes in the jungle doing such awful things to bodies but to have the like of the Vatican and Pope approve of this kind of thing proves the sickness and rot that is within the Church.
We heard of things like Mother Theresa being exorcised before her death. The poor woman in her dying state was probably fighting against death knowing what was most likely going to happen to her earthly body once she drew her last breath and who could blame her and they probably had her exorcised for that.
A good enough relic for people to see would have been items of clothing that she wore in her lifetime or prayer books and things that she used and touched. They did not have to cut up her body and send it around the world.
Really makes you wonder where in the name of God the rules and regulations of the Church come from right from the Pope down.
They had no respect or care for the victims of the abuses of their clergy moving them around to other parishes and now it has been proved they don't even have respect for the dead so how can we therefore expect them to respect or be accountable for the living.
I think we should all write letters of protest to the Vatican itself about this latest abuse of poor Mother Theresa. Cannibals!
God forgive them.
This Church is totally SICK and getting worse with each passing day.