Canonizing a Saint OR rewriting Mother Teresa History from Fact to Fiction to fit the rational?

Mother Teresa declared a saint before huge crowds in the Vatican
By Juliet Perry, Tim Hume and Livia Borghese, CNN
Updated 7:40 AM ET, Sun September 4, 2016
Vatican City (CNN)Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who devoted her life to helping India's poor, has been declared a saint in a canonization Mass held by Pope Francis in the Vatican.
Pope Francis delivered the formula for the canonization of the Albanian-born nun -- known as the "saint of the gutters" -- before huge crowds of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on Sunday morning.
Applause broke out before he completed the formula of canonization, in which he declared "Blessed Teresa of Kolkata to be a saint."

Speaking in Latin, Francis said that "after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Kolkata to be a saint, and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole church."
Catholics -- including hundreds of blue- and white-robed nuns from Missionaries of Charity sisterhood founded by Mother Teresa -- had gathered from around the world to attend the canonization of the church's newest saint, just 19 years after her death.
A huge portrait of Mother Teresa, whom the church credits with having performed two miraculous cures of the sick, hung from St. Peter's Basilica during the colorful ceremony.
Francis: 'May she be your model of holiness'
Pope Francis then delivered a homily, in which he praised Mother Teresa -- "this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life" -- for her charitable work.
"Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded," he said.
"She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity. She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created."

Pope Francis praised Mother Teresa as a model of compassion to Catholics worldwide.
For the newly-sainted Teresa, he said, "mercy was the salt which gave flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering."
She was an example to volunteers around the world, he said. "May she be your model of holiness."
In a departure from his scripted remarks, he noted that people "may struggle" to refer to her as "Saint Teresa." "With great spontaneity, I think we will continue to call her Mother Teresa," he said.
Prayers were then delivered in a number of languages, including Albanian, Mother Teresa's native tongue, and Bengali, the language of Kolkata, where a special Mass was celebrated at the Missionaries of Charity Sunday. A prayer was delivered in Chinese for persecuted Christians around the world.
About 1,500 homeless people from across Italy were bused into the Vatican to be given seats of honor at the Mass -- and be served a pizza lunch by nuns afterward.

Speeding up sainthood

Most of the Catholic Church's saints or blessed people are honored decades, if not centuries, after their deaths. Traditionally, there is a mandatory five-year waiting period before formal evaluation of a candidate for beatification can begin.
 
Mother Teresa's devotees began pressing the Vatican soon after her death to speed up the nun's sainthood cause, saying her holiness was clear to many around the world. Pope John Paul II granted the special dispensation in 1999, and the procedure began.
The pope waived the waiting period in part, some believe, because of her fame and reputation.
John Paul II further paved the way for her beatification in 2002, when he approved a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa after her death.
The approved miracle involved Monica Besra, a 30-year-old Kolkata woman who said praying to the nun cured a stomach tumor. The Vatican committee said in October 2002 that it could find no "scientific explanation" for the woman's recovery.
"I took doctors' medicines, threw up and was in a lot of pain. But when I prayed to Mother Teresa from my heart, Mother Teresa blessed me and now I am healthy," Besra told CNN last week.
"My entire village and I am very happy that she is being made a saint."
Pope Francis formally announced that Mother Teresa would be declared a saint in March 2016, when he recognized a second miracle attributed to her.
A Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors was healed after loved ones prayed to Mother Teresa to heal him, according to Avvenire, a newspaper affiliated to the Catholic Church.

Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity wait in St. Peter's Square.

'Saint of the gutters'

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Mother Teresa set up her Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Kolkata in 1950 and made her headquarters in the Indian city for nearly half a century.
When a legendary photographer met an iconic missionary
Her small figure in a white-and-blue sari and sandals became familiar around the world. She died in Kolkata in 1997 at age 87.

Earning global recognition for her unending work and compassion for the poor, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said her spirit and the respect she had for the worth and dignity of human beings inspired constructive efforts to do away with hunger and poverty.
However, Mother Teresa's legacy has been criticized. Her critics say her charity isn't financially accountable and volunteers aren't properly trained. And some doctors claim Besra was healed by modern medicine, not by prayer.
The nuns and priests from the Missionaries of Charity continue her work around the world, including some ex-communist countries where she was banned. Her order has offices in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Australia, as well as Hong Kong and Russia.
A group of nuns will travel to the Vatican for the canonization ceremony, and those who remain in Kolkata will mark the day with prayers of thanks.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/04/europe/mother-teresa-canonization/index.html

Mother Teresa: Anything but a saint…
Mar 1, 2013 | Brain & Behavior, Uncategorized

The myth of altruism and generosity surrounding Mother Teresa is dispelled in a paper by Serge Larivée and Genevieve Chenard of University of Montreal’s Department of Psychoeducation and Carole Sénéchal of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education.
The paper will be published in the March issue of the journal Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses and is an analysis of the published writings about Mother Teresa. Like the journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, who is amply quoted in their analysis, the researchers conclude that her hallowed image—which does not stand up to analysis of the facts—was constructed, and that her beatification was orchestrated by an effective media relations campaign.
“While looking for documentation on the phenomenon of altruism for a seminar on ethics, one of us stumbled upon the life and work of one of Catholic Church’s most celebrated woman and now part of our collective imagination—Mother Teresa—whose real name was Agnes Gonxha,” says Professor Larivée, who led the research. “The description was so ecstatic that it piqued our curiosity and pushed us to research further.”

As a result, the three researchers collected 502 documents on the life and work of Mother Teresa. After eliminating 195 duplicates, they consulted 287 documents to conduct their analysis, representing 96% of the literature on the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (OMC).
Facts debunk the myth of Mother Teresa
In their article, Serge Larivée and his colleagues also cite a number of problems not take into account by the Vatican in Mother Teresa’s beatification process, such as “her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce.”

‘The sick must suffer like Christ on the cross’

At the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. The missions have been described as “homes for the dying” by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving appropriate care. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. The problem is not a lack of money—the Foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundreds of millions of dollars—but rather a particular conception of suffering and death: “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,” was her reply to criticism, cites the journalist Christopher Hitchens. Nevertheless, when Mother Teresa required palliative care, she received it in a modern American hospital.

Mother Teresa’s questionable politics and shadowy accounting

Mother Teresa was generous with her prayers but rather miserly with her foundation’s millions when it came to humanity’s suffering. During numerous floods in India or following the explosion of a pesticide plant in Bhopal, she offered numerous prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary but no direct or monetary aid. On the other hand, she had no qualms about accepting the Legion of Honour and a grant from the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. Millions of dollars were transferred to the MCO’s various bank accounts, but most of the accounts were kept secret, Larivée says. “Given the parsimonious management of Mother Theresa’s works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

The grand media plan for Mother Teresa’s holiness

Despite these disturbing facts, how did Mother Teresa succeed in building an image of holiness and infinite goodness? According to the three researchers, her meeting in London in 1968 with the BBC’s Malcom Muggeridge, an anti-abortion journalist who shared her right-wing Catholic values, was crucial. Muggeridge decided to promote Teresa, who consequently discovered the power of mass media. In 1969, he made a eulogistic film of the missionary, promoting her by attributing to her the “first photographic miracle,” when it should have been attributed to the new film stock being marketed by Kodak. Afterwards, Mother Teresa travelled throughout the world and received numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech, on the subject of Bosnian women who were raped by Serbs and now sought abortion, she said: “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing—direct murder by the mother herself.”
Following her death, the Vatican decided to waive the usual five-year waiting period to open the beatification process. The miracle attributed to Mother Theresa was the healing of a woman, Monica Besra, who had been suffering from intense abdominal pain. The woman testified that she was cured after a medallion blessed by Mother Theresa was placed on her abdomen. Her doctors thought otherwise: the ovarian cyst and the tuberculosis from which she suffered were healed by the drugs they had given her. The Vatican, nevertheless, concluded that it was a miracle. Mother Teresa’s popularity was such that she had become untouchable for the population, which had already declared her a saint. “What could be better than beatification followed by canonization of this model to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline?” Larivée and his colleagues ask.

Positive effect of the Mother Teresa myth

Despite Mother Teresa’s dubious way of caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it, Serge Larivée and his colleagues point out the positive effect of the Mother Teresa myth: “If the extraordinary image of Mother Teresa conveyed in the collective imagination has encouraged humanitarian initiatives that are genuinely engaged with those crushed by poverty, we can only rejoice. It is likely that she has inspired many humanitarian workers whose actions have truly relieved the suffering of the destitute and addressed the causes of poverty and isolation without being extolled by the media. Nevertheless, the media coverage of Mother Theresa could have been a little more rigorous.”
About the study
The study was conducted by Serge Larivée, Department of psychoeducation, University of Montreal, Carole Sénéchal, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, and Geneviève Chénard, Department of psychoeducation, University of Montreal.
https://scienceblog.com/60730/mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint/

in the service of his holiness the pope'

‘The sick must suffer like Christ on the cross’
At the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. The missions have been described as “homes for the dying” by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving appropriate care. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. The problem is not a lack of money—the Foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundreds of millions of dollars—but rather a particular conception of suffering and death: “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,” was her reply to criticism, cites the journalist Christopher Hitchens.
Nevertheless, when Mother Teresa required palliative care, she received it in a modern American hospital.

Why do some Catholics self-flagellate?
Page last updated at 12:19 GMT, Tuesday, 24 November 2009

The late Pope John Paul II would whip himself, according to a nun who helped to look after him. So how common is this practice in the Catholic faith?
"We would hear the sound of the blows," says Sister Tobiana Sobodka, who was in the next room to Pope John Paul II at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.
Her evidence was given to the Vatican body which is considering whether to declare the Pope - who died five years ago - a saint.
Flagellation is the beating or whipping of the skin, most often on the back, and often drawing blood, as a bodily penance to show remorse for sin.
It was a widespread practice in some parts of the Catholic ministry up to the 1960s but is uncommon today, says Professor Michael Walsh, a Catholic historian.
Flagellation is acted out for symbolic purposes during penitential processions during Lent's Holy Week in Mediterranean countries, he says, as a reminder that Jesus Christ was whipped before the Crucifixion.
But in some countries like the Philippines, this re-enactment of the suffering of Jesus Christ - called the Passion play - can take a more extreme form and can draw blood.
         
For others self-flagellation is a more private expression of faith.
It is thought to have come to prominence in Western Europe in medieval times around 600 to 800 AD as an extreme version of bodily penance, says Professor Lewis Ayres, a Catholic theologian at Durham University.
Early Christians believed that the notion of bodily penance allowed control of the body and emotions in order to focus more fully on worshipping God.
The practice continued in what Mr Ayres calls "the more conservative Catholic orders" well into the 20th Century and is still probably practiced by a "tiny minority" today.

Opus Dei, a branch of the Catholic Church which has a reputation for secrecy and featured in the Dan Brown bestseller The Da Vinci Code, is one of those groups unusual in doing this today, according to Mr Walsh.
Andrew Soane of Opus Dei says that what it calls "corporal mortification" goes back to the early Christians but it fell out of favour in the 1950s.
"It may happen that this change is reversed as people reconnect with their bodies and take control via moderate fasting and some corporal mortification, finding it a very healthy practice, which can overcome such unhealthy developments as drug use, sexual addictions, eating disorders and other body-hating approaches."
The Opus Dei website says some members self-flagellate for about one or two minutes a week, using a woven cotton string that causes some discomfort but does not draw blood.
Tradition of suffering
The revelation that Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, possibly engaged in flagellation does not necessarily surprise Catholic scholars.
"Pope John Paul II was a firm believer in the New Testament tradition of suffering, a consistent theological historical position that a good life is simply preparation for death and life everlasting to follow," according to Mr Ayres.
"Part of a good life is remorse and remorse can be shown through physical suffering."

Mr Walsh says Pope John Paul II grew up in an era where bodily punishment was seen as pious, and the possibility he may have engaged in it will aid the campaign for his beatification.
The Vatican body which decides these matters, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, would regard this as a sign of his religious commitment, says Mr Walsh.
Whether the practice is more widespread in Asia today than Europe is harder for scholars to agree a position on.
Mr Ayres thinks it may be simply that "different forms of Catholic expression and piety take on different forms across the world".
"Certain cultures preserve older customs in a cultural context - and flagellation is no longer part of the cultural context of the vast majority of Catholics in the West," he says.
As to why flagellation seems to have disappeared, Mr Walsh is in no doubt.
"Early Christians thought the body was evil and needed to be controlled. Quite simply, we now have a greater understanding that such practices are not healthy."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8375174.stm