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Static Universe
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlate...3282357,00.html
quote:
Joyous Pope Beatifies Mother Teresa
Sunday October 19, 2003 12:31 PM
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope John Paul II, struggling to celebrate Mass but looking joyous, beatified Mother Teresa during a ceremony Sunday in St. Peter's Square - bestowing one of his church's highest honors on the nun who cared for society's downtrodden.
In a shaky and halting voice, John Paul managed to proclaim Mother Teresa blessed, the last major step on the path to sainthood. But after stumbling through several prayers, he let aides read all of his homily, including a tribute to ``this courageous woman.''
Mother Teresa won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her charity work in India and elsewhere. She died in 1997.
Police and Vatican security officials estimated the crowd at 300,000, one of the Vatican's largest. After a night of rain, the sun was shining Sunday and thousands of tourists and Romans streamed toward the square even after the ceremony began.
John Paul, wheeled in an upholstered chair across the front steps of St. Peter's Basilica toward an altar sheltered by a canopy, seemed pleased by the jubilant crowd.
``Brothers and sisters, even in our days God inspires new models of sainthood,'' John Paul told the crowd. ``Some impose themselves for their radicalness, like that offered by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whom today we add to the ranks of the blessed.''
``In her, we perceive the urgency to put oneself in a state of service, especially for the poorest and most forgotten, the last of the last,'' John Paul said, speaking in a slow and shaky voice.
Nuns from her order wiped away tears and the crowd clapped when he pronounced her blessed. A poster of her smiling, wrinkled face was unveiled to the crowd from the facade of the basilica.
Parkinson's disease has stiffened the pope's facial muscles, and he no longer stands or walks in public because of hip and knee ailments.
In his homily, read by Bombay Cardinal Ivan Dias and others, John Paul said he was ``personally grateful to this courageous woman whom I have always felt at my side.''
Another cardinal substituted for the pope in saying some of the Mass prayers, further evidence of the pope's diminished stamina. After a week of several long ceremonies to mark 25 years in the papacy, John Paul faces another test of his strength Tuesday, when he is to lead a long ceremony to install 30 new cardinals.
Hundreds of nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, the order established by Mother Teresa in 1949 to tend to the destitute, sang hymns with gusto.
Front-row seats were reserved for VIPs, including Queen Fabiola of Belgium, royalty from Liechtenstein and Jordan, the presidents of Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo - in homage to Mother Teresa's roots in the Balkans - and about 2,000 of the poor from shelters run by Mother Teresa's followers, including one inside the Vatican's walls.
Also attending the ceremony were Muslim and Orthodox Christian delegations from Albania.
Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in what is now Skopje, Macedonia. She spent most of her life working in India and established convents and homes for the needy around the world.
The pope put her on the fast track toward sainthood; breaking with the church practice of waiting five years after a candidate's death before starting the often decades-long process of beatification, the last formal step before declaring someone a saint.
Last year he confirmed the required miracle for her beatification, the recovery of an Indian woman who was being treated for what doctors said was an incurable abdominal tumor. A second miracle is needed for elevation to sainthood.
In an interview with The Associated Press a few days before the beatification, the woman, Monica Besra, recounted how nuns from Mother Teresa's order tied a medal with her image around her waist and prayed. The day was exactly one year after Mother Teresa's death.
``That day I fell asleep and I had a deep sleep,'' said Besra, who embraced Catholicism after her recovery. ``When I woke up, I touched my stomach and I found that the tumor was no more. And I felt light.'' John Paul has stressed the importance of fresh role models for his flock in the third millennium, and three of those he has propelled along the path to sainthood were active in the latter half of the 20th century. In addition to Mother Teresa, an Italian mystic monk, Padre Pio, and the Spanish priest who founded the conservative religious organization Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, had huge followings among Catholics.
Mother Teresa ``gave up a lot to do God's work,'' said American visitor Dennis Hunt, pushing his infant son, Andrew in a stroller as he made his way to the square.
Hunt, a member of the U.S. Air Force who came from Ramstein Air Base in Germany along with wife, Annette, convinced his parents to come from Chippewa Falls, Wisc., to join him at the beatification.
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Not sure about this tying icons around the stomach business, but surely Mother Theresa deserves sainthood. Any objections?
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:31
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i think that this is just an example of catholicism coming death.
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:31
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anything passes as a miracle for a sickly catholic church in need of boosting.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:31
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
She was beatified, NOT canonized. She needed only one miracle for this step. What they did do was remove the 5 year waiting period after ones death to look for that first mirace. Thye Church actually is very stricty in how they interpret miracles. |
Let's be clear about the Church and "strictness." Under the current pope, the granting of sainthood has become a kind of PR ploy, used to bolster the image of the Church worldwide (and especially in the Third World, where the potential for growth is greatest). John Paul II has, in his 25 years on the throne, canonized more saints that all the Popes in the previous 400 years before his reign combined. Now, I suppose it's possible that more miracles occured between 1978 and 2003 than occurred between 1578-1978, but we'll actually never know, because JP2 also abolished the office of Devil's Advocate -- the guy whose job it was to argue against an individual's sainthood, thus helping assure that only the truly worthy were canonized.
The Pope is doling out Sainthood the way the Queen doles out knighthoods, and for similar reasons. Do not be surprised when Ringo Starr -- the Catholic Beatle, IIRC -- is beatified.
And, Shi: this may be Catholic-bashing, but it's coming from a fellow Catholic.
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Alexander's Horse
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Panmunjon, hands up!
Jan 1970
time: 15:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Let's be clear about the Church and "strictness." Under the current pope, the granting of sainthood has become a kind of PR ploy |
I'm not sure about that 
quote:
VATICAN CITY—Concerned handlers for Pope John Paul II announced Monday that, in recent weeks, the 78-year-old Catholic leader has "just been blessing everything in sight."
"We are, of course, very concerned for His Holiness' mental condition," said chief papal physician Giuseppe Clementi, standing by the pope's bedside, surrounded by dozens of newly consecrated pill bottles, urine-specimen cups and orthopedic slippers. "Pretty much anything you hold up in front of his face these days, he blesses."
Vatican handlers said they first noticed signs of papal deterioration on Jan. 26, as he deplaned at St. Louis' Lambert International Airport upon his arrival in the U.S. After descending the airplane staircase and kissing the runway, as is papal tradition, the pope broke free of his handlers and blessed a luggage cart, a podium, a Life photographer's camera, the plane's left-side landing gear, three TWA flight attendants, and two of the Swiss Guard who were attempting to release his grip on the landing struts and subdue him. Upon realizing that he was being physically restrained, the pope worked his papal-signet-ring-bearing right hand free and blessed the entire aircraft, which now resides in its own special five-story grotto under St. Peter's Basilica.
The pope's blessing rampage also necessitated the construction a 40,000-square-foot reliquary for the storage of thousands of now-holy items. Housed in the structure are such hallowed objects as the Blessed Vacuum Cleaner Of St. Matthew, the Consecrated Ball Of Crumpled-Up Paper, and the Sacred Zagnut Bar Of Christ, which the pope discovered and blessed during his recent U.S. visit.
The only artifacts not stored in the reliquary are those of medical necessity, which have been left in the pope's room. These include the Most Holy Intravenous Saline Drip, Maria The Day Nurse Of The Blessed Virgin, and the Electroencephalogram and Electrocardiogram Of St. Peter and St. Paul.
"That which the Vicar of Christ has sanctified becomes a holy object and must be used for no other purpose," Clementi said. "Therefore, it is unthinkable to commit the mortal sin of sacrilege by, for instance, either restraining the pope from the consecration of his strained beets or emptying the bedpans once he has filled and blessed them."
Though concerned about the pope's erratic behavior, Vatican staffers did not admit to a loss of morale.
"The pope's condition may be somewhat disconcerting to those of us charged with his care, but it is no doubt God's will," said papal drool-bib acolyte Thomassini Moretti, a nine-year veteran of Vatican spoon-feedings. "I have seen many mysterious things in the service of the Lamb of God, and I must trust that my wristwatch, lunch sack and right leg have become holy artifacts as part of some divine plan that I was not meant to comprehend."
Moretti said he first noticed changes in the pope in May 1996, when he held a much-publicized public baptism of pigeons and stray dogs in Rome's Trevi Fountain. Later that year, he made headlines again when he announced the excommunication of Big Boy and released a controversial papal bull condemning "picnic apes."
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19-10-2003 17:52
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