Study attacks Mother Teresa beatification

(TOI)




It accused the Mother of being generous with her prayers but miserly with her foundation's millions when it came to humanity's suffering.

London:
A controversial study has claimed that Mother Teresa’s beatification was a creation of an orchestrated and effective media campaign.

The study, to be published this month in the journal of studies in religion and sciences called Religieuses, said that blessed Teresa was “anything but a saint.” She was generous with her prayers but miserly with her foundation's millions when it came to humanity's suffering, the study said according to a Times of India report.

Researchers Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard from the University of Montreal's department of psychoeducation, and Carole Senechal of the University of Ottawa's faculty of education, conducted the study.

According to the study, the Vatican overlooked her dubious way of caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it. She actually felt it was beautiful to see the poor suffer, it said.


The Vatican went ahead with her beatification "to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline," the study added.

The researchers analysed published writings about Mother Teresa and concluded 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 campaign".

According to Larivee, facts debunk Teresa's myth.

He says that the Vatican, before deciding on her beatification, did not take into account "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 ... abortion, contraception, and divorce."

At the time of her death, she had 517 "homes for the dying" and these missions welcomed the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. 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 apt care.

According to the study, visiting the doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions and a shortage of actual care, food and painkillers.

They say that the problem was not a paucity of funds as the Order of the Missionaries of Charity successfully raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Researchers said that when it came to her own treatment, "she received it in a modern American hospital.”

The three researchers also dug into records of her meeting in London in 1968 with the BBC's Malcom Muggeridge who had strong views against abortion and shared Mother Teresa's right-wing Catholic values.

The researchers say Muggeridge had decided to promote Teresa.

In 1969, he made a eulogistic film on 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.

Following her death, the Vatican decided to waive the usual five-year waiting period to open the beatification process.

One of the miracles attributed to Mother Theresa is the healing of Monica Besra, after a medallion blessed by Mother Teresa was placed on Besra's abdomen. Bersa suffered from an ovarian cyst and the tuberculosis.

Larivee said Bersa's doctors thought said she was healed by the drugs they had given her.

The Vatican, nevertheless, concluded that it was a miracle.

Cardinals could set date to elect new pope at first round of meetings

(FoxNews)


VATICAN CITY –  Cardinals from around the world gathered Monday inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI's decision to retire.
Cardinals were treated like rock stars as they entered the Vatican on Monday morning, with television crews swarming around the red-capped churchmen and their handlers pushing their way through the crowds.
"A Latin American Pope is possible, everything is possible!" said Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins as he entered.
The core agenda item is to set the date for the conclave and set in place procedures to prepare for it, including closing the Sistine Chapel to visitors and getting the Vatican hotel cleared out and de-bugged, lest anyone try to listen in on the secret conversations of the cardinals.
But a date may not be agreed upon Monday as the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, has said the date won't be finalized until all cardinals have arrived in Rome.
The first day of discussion was again rocked by revelations of scandal, with Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitting that he had engaged in sexual misconduct not befitting a priest, archbishop or cardinal.
O'Brien last week resigned as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and said he wouldn't participate in the conclave after four men came forward with allegations that he had acted inappropriately with them -- the first time a cardinal has stayed away from a conclave because of personal scandal.
Separately, the Vatican is still reeling from the fallout of the scandal over leaked papal documents, and the investigation by three cardinals into who was behind it.
Italian news reports have been rife with unsourced reports about the contents of the cardinals' dossier. Even if the reports are false, as the Vatican maintains, the leaks themselves confirmed a fairly high level of dysfunction within the Vatican bureaucracy, with intrigues, turf battles and allegations of corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the highest levels of the church hierarchy.
In one of his last audiences before resigning, Benedict met with the three cardinals who prepared the report and decided that their dossier would remain secret. But he gave them the go-ahead to answer cardinals' questions about its contents.
Another topic facing the cardinals is the reason they're here in the first place: Benedict's resignation and its implications. His decision to end 600 years of tradition and retire rather than stay on the job until death has completely altered the concept of the papacy, and cardinals haven't shied from weighing in about the implications for the next pope.

Gaping, deadly Florida sinkhole could be uncovered Monday

(CBSNews)



SEFFNER, FLA. The gaping sinkhole that swallowed a man from his Florida home last week could be revealed later Monday when demolition crews knock down the remaining walls and begin clearing away the debris.

Crews on Sunday razed more than half the home, managing to salvage some keepsakes for family members who lived there.

The opening of the sinkhole has been covered by the home, but once emergency officials and engineers can see inside it more clearly, they could begin planning how to deal with it. They also need to decide what will happen to the two homes on either side of the affected house. Experts say the sinkhole has "compromised" those homes, but it's unclear whether steps can be taken to save them.

Jeremy Bush, 35, tried to save his brother, Jeff, when the earth opened up and swallowed him Thursday night.

On Sunday morning, Bush and relatives prayed with a pastor as most of the home -- where he lived with his girlfriend, Rachel Wicker; their daughter, Hannah, 2; and others -- was demolished and waited for firefighters to salvage anything possible from inside. The home was owned by Leland Wicker, Rachel's grandfather, since the 1970s.

The operator of the heavy equipment worked gingerly, first taking off a front wall. Family belongings were scooped onto the lawn gently in hopes of salvaging parts of the family's 40-year history in the home.

As of Sunday afternoon -- when demolition had stopped for the day and only a few walls remained -- a Bible, family photos, a jewelry box and a pink teddy bear for Hannah were among the items saved. Firefighters also were able to pick out the purse of one of the women in the home.

Cheers went up from family, friends and neighbors each time something valuable was salvaged.

Jordan Wheeler, Bush's cousin, told CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP-TV as demolition was starting that he was "heartbroken. I just don't even know what to think sometimes. All those memories, childhood, down the drain."


Wanda Carter, the daughter of Leland Wicker, cradled the large family Bible in her arms. She said her mother and father had stored baptism certificates, cards and photos between the pages of that Bible over the years.

"It means that God is still in control, and He knew we needed this for closure," she said, crying.

Carter said she spent from age 11 to 20 in the home, and she had to close her eyes as the home was knocked down.

"Thank you for all of the memories and life it gave us," she said.

The Rev. John Martin Bell of Shoals Baptist Church said he had been with the family all morning. "We just prayed with them," he said. He added that all five who lived in the house -- Bush, Wicker, Hannah and two others ages 50 and 45 -- were in need of support and prayers from the community.

Several generations of family members lived in the home at the time of the ground collapse, including Jeff Bush, the man now presumed dead.

Jeremy Bush tried to save his brother by jumping into the sinking dirt hole. He had to be pulled out of the still-shifting hole by a Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputy, who was visibly shaken when talking about the incident more than a day later.

"I've never seen anything move so fast and do so much destruction," Deputy Douglas Duvall said.

The search for Jeff Bush, 37, was called off Saturday. He was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner, a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa, when the ground opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house at the time escape unharmed as the earth crumbled.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is conducting the investigation. Detective Larry McKinnon said the sheriff's office and the county medical examiner cannot declare Bush dead if his body is still missing. Under Florida law, Bush's family must petition a court to declare him deceased.

"Based on the circumstances, he's presumed dead; however the official death certificate can only be issued by a judge and the family has to petition the court," McKinnon said.

The area around Seffner is known for sinkholes due to the geography of the terrain, but they are rarely deadly. No one, from longtime public safety officials to geologists, could remember an incident where a person was sucked into the earth without warning.

NASA administrator warns of tough times ahead

(TGDaily)

As NASA's SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docks with the ISS, its head, Charles Bolden, has warned that recent political events could impact the agency's mission.

He says that NASA's plans to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s could be jeopardized with the sequestration  the President was force by law to sign on Friday evening.

"The sequester could further delay the restarting of human space launches from US soil, push back our next generation space vehicles, hold up development of new space technologies, and jeopardize our space-based, Earth observing capabilities," he says.

"In spite of this threat to our progress, however, we must remember that all of our investments in space are creating good jobs here on Earth and helping to inspire young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math."

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was grabbed by the station's robotic arm at 8:56 am EST yesterday and installed onto the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module.

It had lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:10 am on Friday. However, shortly after spacecraft separation from the rocket's second stage, the Dragon lost three of its four thruster pods.

For the next four hours, SpaceX engineers worked to clear the blocked valves and get the pods back online. Ninety minutes after launch, Dragon's solar arrays were deployed, and, by 3 pm, all four thruster pods were online and attitude control was regained.

"Launching rockets is difficult, and while the team faced some technical challenges after Dragon separation from the launch vehicle, they called upon their thorough knowledge of their systems to successfully troubleshoot and fully recover all vehicle capabilities," says Bolden. "Dragon is now once again safely berthed to the station."

As a result of the difficulties, Dragon was a day late in docking with the station, although this isn't expected to have any impact on the various scientific experiments being delivered.

The flight is the second of at least 12 SpaceX cargo resupply missions to the space station through 2016. The ship is carrying about 1,268 pounds of supplies for various experiments, and will return with about 2,668 pounds of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities.

On board the capsule are various new experiments, including studies of how cells and plants grow in microgravity. One experiment will examine mixtures made of lead and tin that contain a small amount of tin branch-like structures called dendrites, with the aim of producing higher-quality products from the casting of molten metals.

"The newly arrived scientific experiments delivered by Dragon carry the promise of discoveries that benefit Earth and dramatically increase our understanding of how humans adapt to space," says William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

"Spaceflight will never be risk-free, but it's a critical achievement that we once again have a US capability to transport science to and from the International Space Station."


Read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/space-brief/69887-nasa-administrator-warns-of-tough-times-ahead#DHywgJcMEl2XXS6q.99