Science and its quest for objective truth appear to have no place in the midst of media-driven frenzy in India over the canonisation of Sister Alphonsa at the Vatican. We are told that the people of India (Kerala, to be specific) are watching a landmark moment when its daughter who died at the age of 36 in 1946 is being conferred the sainthood. Watching and reading the media coverage on the canonisation of the first India woman (she hailed from Bharananganam in Kottayam district in Kerala), I have felt that I am living in an Age of Unreason. No question has been raised about the miracles supposed to have been caused by her as the excitement, sustained by the media, is still strong.
We are told that Sister Alphonsa, who was born Anna, has been put on the high road to sainthood when believers who prayed at her tomb experienced miraculous cures or favours. One of these ‘miracles’, prominently highlighted in the media, is the healing of a club-footed boy named Jinil. The miracle story runs like this: when he was just one year, he was taken to the tomb for prayers by his parents. His congenital problem was cured the same day. Let me recall here Carl Sagan’s oft-quoted plea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. But proofs are the last thing that people are concerned about when it comes to religious faith. Cure of a deformity after prayers at the tomb of a dead person is a scientific question. But unfortunately, faith is not interested in scientific questions and the miracles are always on a higher spiritual pedestal so that science and reason cannot put them to test and falsify them.
Belief in miracles is nothing new since every known religion has its own sets of miracles. Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea, Jesus turned water into wine and Mohammad made a night journey to Jerusalem and ascension to the heavens, to mention a few from the collection of miracle stories from the three Semitic religions. But the concept of miracle is institutionalised in Christianity, especially in the Catholic Church. Full-fledged sainthood in the Catholic Church is accorded to a person posthumously after a bureaucratic process that involves various stages. Prelude to canonisation is beatification when a member of the clergy is declared venerable. A person’s eligibility to sainthood depends on the Catholic establishment’s assessment of his or her miracles cures. The Vatican sets up a Tribunal to examine the application for somebody’s sainthood and analyse cases of miracle healing caused by the person. A nun or priest cannot qualify for beatification if he/she does not have at least one case of miracle cure. Canonisation follows when one or more miracle cure is `proved’ before the tribunal. We are told that in the case of Sister Alphonsa the process of examining the claim for her candidature started in 1953, the tribunal examined scores of witnesses.
Now we will go back to the beatification of another nun whose `miracles’ have also occurred in India. Agnes Bojaxhiu, an Albanian nun who is better known Mother Teresa who died in 1997. What is her miracle? On her first death anniversary, two nuns in a village of Raigunj in West Bengal claim to have strapped an aluminium medal of the deceased nun to the abdomen of Monica Besra said to be suffering from a large tumour in her uterus. She was said to have been completely cured that day. But the Superintendent of the local hospital, Dr. Manju Murshed, and his colleague gynaecologist Dr. Ranjan Mustafi disclosed that Mrs. Besra had been suffering from tuberculosis and an ovarian growth and that she had been successfully treated for both ailments. Her husband Selku Murmu acknowledged that his wife had been treated and cured by doctors.
We may soon witness elaborate ceremony in the Vatican accompanied by media hype, such as the one we witnessed in connection with the conferring of sainthood on Sister Alphonsa, when the Catholic church decides to canonise Mother Teresa. The voices of Dr. Mursheds and Dr. Mustafis are all likely to be drowned in the sound bytes of those for whom the world of reason is only a side show which they can afford to watch and enjoy for their own convenience.
