RELIGION-INDIA: Canonisation Takes More Than Miracles

KOTTAYAM, India, Oct 13, 2008 (IPS) - Christians who form 20 percent of the 32 million people of this southern Indian state are celebrating Sunday’s canonisation of their beloved Sister Alphonsa, unmindful of the controversies that surround the event and the life of the nun who lived at Bharananganam, a village 33 km from here.

‘’I regularly visit the shrine at Bharananganam 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.

Alphonsa worked most of her miracles after her death in 1946, curing ailments and healing those who sought her intercession. Newspapers in this town, famed for its publishing industry and its Christian traditions, regularly carry her wimpled portrait acknowledging ‘favours received’.

Officially what moved Pope Benedict XVI to confer sainthood on Alphonsa was the miraculous cure that her spirit is believed to have effected, in 1999, on Genil Joseph, a congenitally deformed child. But there are alleged to have been political and other considerations.

Alphonsa - who was beatified in 1986 when Pope John Paul II visited this town - is the second Indian to be canonised. 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 short of proven miracles.

Catholic media in this state 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 the eyebrows of well-wishers of Mother Teresa across different Christian denominations.

Father Jojo Anto, a priest from Chaldean Syrian East denomination, based in the town of Thrissur, said he did not believe in miracles attributed to saints. "Our church does not canonise anyone as saint. 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 miracles,’’ the priest told IPS.

The Chaldean Syrian East is one of several denominations tracing origins to St. Thomas the Apostle who, according to tradition, came to India in 52 AD. Following the Portuguese colonisation of parts of Kerala, Christians in Malabar (historical name for Kerala) became allied to the Roman Catholic Church. However, beginning in the 17th century, some conservative groups began resisting the ‘latinisation’ and looking to the Syriac Orthodox Church for spiritual leadership.

Today, the Roman Catholic Church in Kerala, owing allegiance to the Pope, is divided among the Syro-Malabar, Malankara and Latin Catholic rites and together accounts for about 70 per cent of the Christian population in India.

"We have to believe that there is some distinction between native Indian [Alphonsa] and citizen Indian [Mother Teresa] in the selection process. The organised lobbying and the flow of money to Vatican are also key factors behind the conferment of sainthood,’’ Joseph Pulikkunnel, director of the Bharananganam-based Indian Institute of Christian Studies, told IPS.

The sainthood of Mother Teresa, said her successor as head of the MoC, Sister Nirmala, ‘’will be chosen by God in his own time’’. Reacting to news of Alphonsa’s canonisation, Sister Nirmala was quoted in the media as saying that "in the heart of the people, Mother has always been a saint".

Explaining the undercurrents in the conferment process of sainthood, Pulikkunnel said he believed that ‘’the signature of the Pope should not be a pre-requisite’’ to proclaim 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?’’

"When I was a student at a school in Bharananganam while Sister Alphonsa was still alive, I heard stories of the sisters in the Franciscan Clarist convent ill-treating the blessed lady. These allegations are still haunting many among the older generation,’’ said Pulikkunnel who is known as 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 being taken out when she died aged 36.

"After she died her tomb slowly turned into a shrine and, from 1952 onwards, the money deposited by believers at the place was sent up to the Vatican through a specially appointed vicar,’’ said Pulikkunnel. ‘’It has been said that around Rs 620 million (14 million US dollars) was collected from the shrine and sent up.’’

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 that miracles and hagiography are insufficient to proclaim a person as saint. She observed, "Catholics who reside at Vatican - potentially able to persuade those who make decision about canonisation - are from the Syrian community, an eastern rite within the Roman Catholic Church.’’

According to Dempsey ‘’the lobbying for the official recognition and the politics of canonisation’’ depends on the strength or affluence of people in the community. "Organised support and popular appeal are important for the progression of a saint’s campaign. What is often needed in order that an individual’s case continues to progress through what is normally a very time-consuming process is 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. Although Syrian Catholicism represents a non-mainstream and even slightly contentious tradition in the eyes of Vatican, it is a segment of the Kerala Catholic population that possess economic and social clout typically not available to followers of its Latin counterpart.’’

Dempsey said a conversation she had with the Latin Catholic bishop revealed that money and influence were determining factors in the elevation to sainthood. "We [Latin Catholics] have plenty of saints up in heaven, we just don’t have the money to canonise 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 "rigour" and "sobriety" by bishops in deciding to begin the process of beatification and determining the required miracles.

Father T. Selvarajan, secretary to 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 Virgin Mary. That is why we aren’t agreeing with sainthood as prescribed by Vatican."

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