Mother's miracle questioned

[Avinash]

Kolkata: A controversy is brewing on the miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, on the basis of which the Vatican has put her on the fast track to sainthood.

 

A Kolkata-based group called the Rationalists Association of India has questioned the authenticity of the miracle. And now West Bengal's former Health Minister, Partha De, has confirmed that the Missionaries of Charity was told two years ago that what was being viewed as a miracle was in fact a medical cure.

 

Ever since the Vatican approved the miracle - that Mother Teresa's posthumous intervention had cured Monica Besra of a tumour in the stomach - she has consistently refused to speak about it. "I will not say anything. What I had to say, I said in Kolkata. I will not speak again," Monica insisted.

 

Prabir Ghosh of the Rationalist Association of India, which was formed in 1985 to debunk tall claims, insisted, "It was a very ordinary disease and it was curable by treatment. Treatment was given and she was cured. Where is the miracle in that?"

 

"Mother's greatness does not depend on whether she gets sainthood or not. Those who respect her will do so anyway, for her work and her service," he added.

 

The Association's claim is based on investigations at the state government hospital at Balurghat in North Bengal where Monica Besra was treated for tuberculoid meningitis in 1998.

 

In February 2000, the Missionaries of Charity approached the then health minister. They wanted a government doctor from Balurghat to testify in a religious court.

 

"Apparently they desired that he (doctor) will depose that there was a miracle in treating Monica Besra, a patient who was treated at the hospital. We told them that was not possible, but that they could put their queries to the government. Indeed, they did put their queries and then we held an enquiry. It revealed that Monica had some ailment, she was treated in the hospital, she was cured and then she was released," Partha De elaborated.

 

The Missionaries of Charity refused to comment on what is emerging as a conflict between religious faith and medical science. But the Rationalists Association is looking for the doctor who certified that Besra's cure was a miracle.

[Guest guest]

Where did the Catholic Church come up with this formula for deciding who is a saint or not?This is what happens when we choose religion over realization.

[theist]

I'm with guest on this one.Oh wait. That was me who forgot to login.

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

That was a good line theist. I was laughing for a couple minutes.

[theist]

Haribol JNdasji,

 

Gotta keep it a little loose sometimes. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Avinash]

I wonder why some people think that the greatness of a person should be determined by if he/she has performed any miracle. I do not think it is good. On the contrary, I find it bad for the very person whom they are trying to glorify. This is because, if the greatness of some people are determined solely on the basis of the miracles they are said to have performed, then general public, in due course of time, will forget what other deeds these people have performed. If, in future, it is proved that the so called miracles were no miracles at all, then, in the eyes of general public, the greatness of these people will be reduced to naught.

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

I am very surprised the Vatican was so quick to accept a claimed miracle from India. In India even I could get a doctor to say I performed a miracle and cured one of their patients. This doesn't make the catholic church look very good, and it brings in to doubt all the other miracles they may have accepted in the past.

 

[Avinash]

What I feel is that Vetican had already decided to give sainthood to mother Teresa. But, as per rules, she could get sainthood only if it was proved that she had performed some miracle. I don't think that the authorities in Vetican church themselves believe that this was a miracle.

[vsdprasad]

News from Indian Express:

<a href="http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=15798" target="_blank">http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=15798 </a>

 

Besra's husband says doctors cured her, not Mother Teresa

 

Press Trust of India

 

New York, October 14: The husband of Monica Besra who was reportedly cured miraculously by Mother Teresa, has said his wife was cured by doctors and not by miracle, a report has said.

 

"It is much ado about nothing," he told the Time magazine. "My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle." Peeved with the attention his now famous wife was getting, he wants to be left in peace.

 

According to the report, he was peeved at wife's fame, in part because the press was constantly at his doorstep.

 

"I want to stop this jamboree, people coming with cameras as every few hours or so," he said.

 

Domestic bliss, the report said, has fled the household of Seiku Murmu and his wife Monica Besra.

 

Monica is a celebrity in the small village of Dangram because she is the beneficiary of what many catholics believe is the first posthumous miracle of Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity.

 

On Sept. 5, 1998, the first anniversary of the nun's death, Monica was suffering abdominal pain caused, she believed, by a tumour. But the purported tumour vanished when Monica applied a medallion with an image of the Mother to the location of her pain.

 

In August 2001, Monica's miracle was supplied to the Vatican as part of the fast-tracking of Mother Teresa's canonisation. Two weeks ago, the Vatican recognised the 1998 miracle, beginning the process of Mother Teresa's beatification, a major step toward sainthood.

 

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