feb 23rd, 2008
some years ago, in my column "the saint business", i talked about the malayalam short story, "the beatified kochappi" and the fake miracles associated with a 'dead saint'. it was written by lapsed catholic ponkunnam varki, and exposes the hoaxes and the money-mindedness of the church.
my column is at http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/oct/17rajeev.htm
in the end, the business of making the believers eat the dirt from the 'saint's tomb' is so lucrative that when the 'saint', who it turns out wasn't dead at all, makes a reappearance, there is no option but to beat him to death. the business is too good to waste on some details like some piddly 'saint's' non-death.
now it turns out the more or less the same thing is going on in new mexico. (i wonder who they beat to death there, was it 'Don Abeyta'?) as they say, truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it concerns christists and their 'miracles', such as m. teresa's miracle where a patient had a tumor disappear because of m. teresa's intervention (and some surgery that actually removed it!).
see the nytimes article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/us/20dirt.html?scp=1&sq=flock+pastor&st=nyt
i also liked the lovely statements:
"Don Abeyta built a small chapel for the crucifix at the discovery site in the valley, which, historians note, had been a sacred area for Pueblo Indians. Soon, word began to spread that this was a place for the lame and the blind to be healed. Today's dirt hole is said to be on the spot where the crucifix was found, accounting for its supposed power and the continued faith of visitors even if they know the dirt is brought in from outside."
as usual, stealing other peoples' sacred sites and putting their crappy "mutilated corpse of dead arab stuck on a stick" there.
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