Holy row over India's first woman saint
By K S Hari Kumar
KOTTAYAM, India - Christians, who form 20% of the 32 million people living in
the southern Indian state of Kerala, are celebrating Sunday's canonization of
their beloved Sister Alphonsa, unaware of the controversies that surround the
life of the first Indian woman to be elevated to sainthood.
Alphonsa lived in Bharananganam, a remote village 33 kilometers from Kottayam
district, and worked most of her miracles after her death in 1946. She cured
the ailments of hundreds who had prayed for intercession and newspapers in
Kottayam city, famed for its publishing industry and its Christian traditions,
regularly carry her wimpled portrait acknowledging "favors received".
"I regularly visit her shrine to seek Sister Alphonsa's blessings,
and I feel she greatly deserves to be a saint," said Sara George, a school
teacher and mother of two.
What moved Pope Benedict XVI to confer sainthood on Alphonsa, officially, was
the miraculous cure that her spirit is believed to have effected, in 1999, on
Genil Joseph, a congenitally deformed child, yet observers have said there were
more pressing political and financial reasons.
Alphonsa - who was beatified in 1986 when Pope John Paul II visited this town -
is only the second Indian to be canonized, and is the first woman. She follows
the missionary Gonsalo Garcia, who was born of a Portuguese father and an
Indian mother and was crucified in 1596 in Nagasaki, Japan, on the orders of a
suspicious shogun.
Mother Teresa, the Albanian-born nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity
(MoC) and worked among the poorest of the poor in the eastern metropolis of
Kolkata, was beatified in 2003 and placed on the "fast track" to sainthood -
but she is still too short of proven miracles to have achieved it.
Catholic media in Kottayam have attributed Alphonsa's elevation to her being a
''daughter of the soil", and "a seed of the ancient Christian community of
Kerala", but this has raised eyebrows among Mother Teresa's well-wishers, who
come from various different Christian denominations.
Father Jojo Anto, a priest from the Chaldean Syrian East denomination, based in
the central Kerala town of Thrissur, said he did not believe in miracles
attributed to saints.
"Our church does not canonize anyone as saints. We do not believe in miracle
crusades," he asserted. "It is true that illness will be cured by prayers and
good faith, but this should not be taken as a miracle,'' the priest told Inter
Press Service.
The Chaldean Syrian East is one of several denominations tracing its origins to
St Thomas the Apostle who, according to tradition, came to India in 52 AD.
Following the Portuguese colonization of parts of Kerala, Christians in Malabar
(the historical name for Kerala) allied themselves to the Roman Catholic
Church.
However, since the 17th century, some conservative groups have begun resisting
"Latinization" and have looked to the Syriac Orthodox Church for spiritual
leadership.
Today, the Roman Catholic Church in Kerala, which owes its allegiance to the
pope, is divided among the Syro-Malabar, Malankara and Latin Catholic rites
which together account for about 70% of the Christian population in India.
"We have to believe that there is some distinction between the native Indian
[Alphonsa] and the citizen Indian [Mother Teresa] in the selection process.
Organized lobbying and the flow of money to the Vatican are also key factors
behind the conferment of sainthood," said Joseph Pulikkunnel, director of the
Bharananganam-based Indian Institute of Christian Studies.
The sainthood of Mother Teresa "will be chosen by God in his own time", said
her successor as head of the MoC, Sister Nirmala. Reacting to news of
Alphonsa's canonization, she was quoted in the media as saying that "in the
heart of the people, Mother [Teresa] has always been a saint".
Explaining the undercurrents in the conferment process, Pulikkunnel said he
believed "the signature of the pope should not be a pre-requisite" to
proclaiming a person as a saint.
"In India, there were many people who lived like saints, in the Hindu,
Christian and other faiths. They are living in the hearts of people, and need
no one's certificate. Do you think that Mahatma Gandhi needed any certificate
from a religious head?''
Pulikkunnel said he studied in Bharananganam while Sister Alphonsa was still
alive, and had heard stories of the sisters in the Franciscan Clarist convent
ill-treating her. "These allegations still haunt many among the older
generation,'' said Pulikkunnel, who is a Catholic reformist.
There were attempts by the Clarist congregation to oust Alphonsa, who suffered
from several incurable diseases, and Pulikkunnel recalled watching the quiet,
unremarkable cortege when she died aged just 36.
"After she died her tomb slowly turned into a shrine and, from 1952 onwards,
the money deposited by believers was sent to the Vatican through a specially
appointed vicar,'' said Pulikkunnel. ''It has been said that around Rs 620
million [US$14 million] was collected from the shrine."
Corinne G Dempsey, a researcher on culture and world view in South India on
behalf of the American Institute of Indian Studies, and author of Kerala
Christian Sainthood, said miracles and hagiography alone are
insufficient to proclaim a person as saint.
"Catholics who reside at the Vatican, who are potentially able to persuade
those who make decisions about canonization, are from the Syrian community, an
eastern rite within the Roman Catholic Church."
According to Dempsey, lobbying for official recognition and the politics of
canonization depend on the strength or affluence of people in the community.
"Organized support and popular appeal are important for the progression of a
saint's campaign. What is often needed is normally a very time-consuming
process and a certain amount of political clout from within the Vatican."
Conspicuously absent among Kerala's candidates for sainthood are
representatives from the Latin rite, a group consisting mainly of coastal
fishing communities converted by the Portuguese in the 16th century, she said.
"Although Syrian Catholicism represents a non-mainstream and even slightly
contentious tradition in the eyes of the Vatican, it is a segment of Kerala's
Catholic population that possesses the economic and social clout typically not
available to followers of its Latin counterpart."
A conversation she had with the Latin Catholic bishop revealed that money and
influence were determining factors in the elevation to sainthood, said Dempsey.
"We [Latin Catholics] have plenty of saints up in heaven, we just don't have
the money to canonize them."
Meanwhile, responding to the pressure tactics adopted by influential groups,
the Vatican has decided to tighten the selection process of sainthood. New
procedures announced in February call for more "rigor" and "sobriety" by
bishops in deciding to begin the process of beatification and determining the
required miracles.
Father T Selvarajan, secretary to the Pastoral Board, Church of South India, is
among those who would deny the pope the power to confer sainthood. He told IPS:
"Christians believe in one God and that he alone is blessed. We pray to Christ,
not to the Virgin Mary. That is why we aren't agreeing with sainthood as
prescribed by Vatican."
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