The Wicked
Witch of the East
Mother Theresa, the sainted matriarch of Calcutta, suffered an illness a few months ago which required her to enter hospital. The world held its collective breath as she fought to survive. Would she recover? And, if she didn't, how would the poor, the dispirited and the dispossessed of Calcutta survive without her tender ministrations?A collective sigh of relief signified her survival.
A few weeks later, she fell over, injured a leg and once again entered hospital. Once again, she survived.
The news was, predictably, met with rejoicing throughout the Catholic and broadly Western world. I suppose, to the Vatican, her survival was interpreted as a sign that her work in this life is not yet complete.
I don't know what the citizens of Calcutta thought.
India will continue to shoulder the burden of her hypocrisy.
I take her survival as raising serious doubts about the beatification that has been so unwisely bestowed upon her. After all, God, in His Infinite Mercy, had two opportunities to allow the wizened old hag to shuffle off this mortal coil. He declined each one.
I would have thought God, on observing the suffering of one of His apparently favorite daughters, would have welcomed the opportunity to engage in infinite philosophical and theological discourse with the Wicked Witch of the East. One would have expected Him to say to St Peter, "Cast open the Pearly Gates, skip the interrogation, shuffle the sainted one straight into my presence!"
But no.
Could it be that "St Theresa of Calcutta's" sins are finally catching up with her? After all the hobnobbing with the abominable Nikolai Ceauscescu and the equally abhorrent Shah of Iran, the laundering of Charles Keating's and Robert Maxwell's dirty money, and the forced baptizing into the Catholic church of dying Hindus, perhaps God knows something the Pope doesn't...or chooses not to notice.
© FeNiX 1996