A nun known as Sister Alphonsa will be canonized by the Catholic Church later this year, becoming the first Indian female saint, according to the BBC. 
Sister Alphonsa has a somewhat dark life story:
Sister Alphonsa (1910-1946) of Kerala was beatified in 1986 by the late Pope John Paul II on a visit to India. She will be formally canonised in October.
She had burnt and disfigured herself to avoid a marriage, having chosen to dedicate her life to Christ.
She will become a saint ahead of the Albanian nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Mother Teresa was beatified in 2003.
The decision to accord sainthood to Sister Alphonsa was made over the weekend at a meeting between the Pope and other cardinals at the Vatican.
Sister Alphonsa, whose real name was Anna Muttathupadathu, was described by those who knew her as generous and loving. (link)
I should note that the story about it being an intentional self-injury is not repeated on Sister Alphonsa’s Wikipedia page, nor did the Catholic Church refer to it that way in its statement on Sister Alphonsa’s Beatification in 1986. (Also, see how her story is described by Catholicism.org) So perhaps the story isn’t true, or if it is true, it may not be important to those who revere Sister Alphonsa. (If readers have experience with Sister Alphonsa, do people tend to believe this story? Is it important to the popular understanding of why she is revered?)
Of course, Sister Alphonsa is not becoming a Saint for that back-story, but rather because she lived a pious life, overcame her disability (and the lifetime of pain that followed her injury), and helped people. Two miracles are also attributed to her (that is also a requirement for canonization, as I understand it).
That said, I have to say I find the back-story powerful. Is it really true that at age 13 she burned herself in this way to escape a marriage she didn’t want, in order to dedicate her life to the Church? If so, that is at once an amazing and horrible act of self-assertion — and renunciation.
you forgot to mention “crazy”
That’s because I don’t think it’s interesting to think of it as “crazy.”
People don’t do things like this because they’re “crazy,” they do them because they’re desperate for something (escape? faith?). What was in the mind of this 13 year old girl? I find it much more interesting to try and imagine her reality than to simply cast judgment and dismiss her with a word like “crazy.”
Amardeep,
Baba Amte passed away a few weeks ago. He dedicated himself to the rehabilitation of people afflicted by leprosy, moving on to lead other peoples’ movements in the Narmada Valley. He is the most important social worker and humanitarian to emerge from India since independence. The Nobel committee ignored him as did the GoI and India’s chatterati, not one of whom ever proposed him for the Bharat Ratna. Baba Amte’s life and work render awards and honors mere baubles. How is it that no one here on SM thought of honoring his memory? Baba Amte was not doing anything for faith. He was simply trying to find the courage to help the least able to live free with dignity.
The turning point in his life came one rainy evening, as Baba headed home. A huddled figure lay on the roadside. At first it seemed like a bundle of rags. But then he noticed some movement. Baba looked closer and recoiled instantly. Lying before him was a man in the last stages of leprosy. The dying man had no fingers. Maggots crawled over his naked body. Horrified by this sight, terrified of infection, Baba ran home. But he could not run away from the self-loathing, which began to hound him. How could he have left a lonely forsaken man to lie there in the rain? So he forced himself to return and feed the man. He also put up a bamboo shed to protect him against the rain. That man, Tulshiram, died in Baba’s care and irrevocably changed young Amte’s life. Baba had always thought of himself as being fearless and daring. The encounter with TuIshiram shattered this self-image. The very sight of Tulshiram filled him with an irrepressible dread. Even as he cared for the dying man this fear would not leave him:
Nice. It commences with the very first comment. That’s classy. To me it’s not a question of whether something is interesting or crazy, it’s a question of respect. The renunciation of the world or its obligations is a common part of the narratives of Saints. From what I was taught, it seems like she lived a good and charitable life…so why be so obnoxious about her choice?
How quickly would I get tarred and feathered, if I said piercing your body and pulling heavy objects as a sign of devotion was “crazy”?
3 · jyotsana said
And the double-standard rears its head before I can even publish my previous comment! But first things first. Baba Amte was amazing, and our inability to post about him (due to a lack of resources on our part) shouldn’t be unfairly interpreted as a statement regarding whether or not we respect him. If we don’t post about something, it’s not an attempt to disrespect it.
And because this woman did, she’s inferior? I wonder if the people whom she helped thought that. Why not come out and say it– “how is it that SM posted about a Christian Saint when a heroic non-Christian was ignored?”
I agree that it’s not useful or insightful to dismiss this as “crazy,” but I must (respectfully) disagree with you, ANNA, when you say:
Because I think that’s just as simplistic as dismissing it as crazy — to say, we just have to respect this and not question/dissect it at all. One shouldn’t blindly respect something just because a lot of people do it or believe in it — this gets into the familiar questions of moral relativism etc. etc. (viz.: should someone be tarred and feathered for suggesting that female circumcision is, well, perhaps not crazy because that’s still not helpful, but cruel, unfair, [insert negative adjective of choice]?). Personally, I find it more enriching to subject even traditionally revered figures/practices to the scrutiny Amardeep describes in #2. It’s a more humanist approach (secular or not, doesn’t matter) and I suppose it appeals to me for that reason.
Self-injury to avoid a forced marriage seems rational rather than crazy. What other choices would a young woman in that time and place have had?
5 · A N N A said
Anna, how could I say that?
In the case of Baba Amte it was an act of courage to help people afflicted with leprosy. And this after what for an anyone would be a very courageous or selfless record of achievement; he had given up a flourishing legal practice, participated in the Quit India struggles, worked with oppressed Hindus (cleaning up nightsoil with his hands). It is about how Baba Amte found fulfillment in courage. A life like Baba Amte’s renders any discussion of superiority irrelevant.
I just meant to say she “exhibited an element of irrationality and mental unsoundness” in burning herself for the purpose of avoiding marriage. I appreciate the fact that she was charitable, fyi.
Don’t be so paranoid. I don’t think any normal/reasonable person will take offence at you for saying trivial/obvious things like that!
Jyotsana,
The only difference is that we are not talking about Baba Amte in this post. I believe the purpose of allowing comments on news items was to initiate discussions on news pieces that the commenters found interesting.
I apologize if I have spoken out of place and the moderators are free to delete my comment.
All religions are fraudulent at a basic level. They are more interesting for what they say about the human need for explanation and solace than for the claims they actually make, which are risible. I actually respect the need for explanation and solace before the mystery of existence, and I think it is a grassroots longing in humanity, so I will never sneer at that, if only because at times I have felt the need for solace and consolation too.
As the most powerful single religio-political institution in the world the Vatican leads the way in this spiritual imperialism come fraudulence, but it is visible in every other religion to a greater or lesser extent. But in the context of this post, and the personal experience of a friend of mine from Liverpool, I really hope that one day the Vatican finds it in them to canonise one of the many hundreds of thousands of children who were raped and sodomised by Catholic priests, a practise that was the norm for generations, and was systematically covered up by the Catholic establishment around the world. It’s not the love of God or the desire for transcendence that angers me, it’s the hypocrisy and mendacity and fraudulence of clerical establishments (of all religions) that deserves to be screamed at for eternity.
6 · brownelf said
Oh, I’m so sorry if that’s how it read– I don’t think there’s anything wrong with questioning things, especially the way Amardeep tried to, with this post. I meant that respectful conversations don’t exclude or insult people. Question away, if you can do it fairly, if that makes sense. I agree with you, demanding blind respect for something based on its popularity is illogical [the jumping off the bridge admonition comes to mind 🙂 ]; I just want a conversation wherein we remain cognizant that for some, this is personal. That doesn’t mean I support moral relativism, that means I support kindness.
.
Jyotsana, thank you so much for clarifying.
10 · umber desi said
That is exactly why we enabled comments there. 🙂
If that’s out of place, I hope more of our wise regulars kindly step up and help us moderate, by leaving such useful comments. 😉
Whatever is in the mind of all brainwashed teenagers.
M. Nam
Great story. But it fails to mention that Alphonse mangoes were named after her.
Amardeep: Here’s my 2 cents. BBC is (if indeed that’s what they claim)dead wrong saying that sister Alphonsa will be the “First Indian Saint”. I would suggest they need to clarify e.g. “first indian christian catholic saint”. Ancient India was very fertile with dozens of women declared as “Saint” by their contemporaries. Just to name one from Gujarat/Rajasthan border town of Mewaad – famous Mirabai was considered a “Saint”.
Anna,
Thank you for the kind words.
Excellent point, YoDad. The Orthodox church in India has had one saint (Parumala Thirumeni) for quite a while now, too. 🙂
Wasn’t aware of her till she was canonized, she totally lapped MT in the nunstakes! Was it easier to unearth miracles attributed to her because she was not in the harsh glare of publicity like MT has been, despite the fast tracking of her process by JP II?
At one level, this is a very indian story, a young women finding her path thru religion, as have many indian women from Avvaiyar to Meera Bai to Khema and so on. She certainly deserves our respect, as much as any one of her predecessors…
And, yes, even today many “different” indian women find a path in life thru religion.. we can have many diverent views about the appropriateness of this but its a reality..
But at a different level this is also the story of a authoritarian and violent institution – the office of the pope – expressing itself thru propaganda and deception. This entity has a history of extreme bigotry and hatred towards the “other” and yet arrogates itself to speak on behalf of all catholics and even all christians. It has yet to apologize or seek forgiveness for the murder of millions of animists, pagans, other christian sects, hindus and buddhists that were tortured and murdered at its hands. Its wealth and institutions are literally built out of the dead bodies of the “other” peoples. So thats certainly a problem for me.
Literally? Wow, cool–next time I’m in Rome I’ll take the time to take a Vatican tour so I can see how it’s the world’s largest structure made of bones. . . . Who knew? That’s pretty wild!
Wrong. Mirabai too had a lot of societal pressure to conform, marry and be “normal”. So did Khema, Andal and hundreds of women saints. However, none of them mutilated themselves or used other violent (self-violence is violence too!) methods for their goal. Since their Bhakti came from within (and not through any preacher), they were confident in their choice and could articulate it to society to convince that their path was right.
M. Nam
Rose of Lima, a 17th century Peruvian saint, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Rose_of_Lima, was supposed to have marred her beauty for similar reasons to those of Sister Alphonse. The pressures for marriage are so extreme in some cultures that to get out it, you have to act in a way that really makes a statement. What are a few facial scars to a life she desperately didn’t want that would keep her from one she desperately did want? Sort of like some people lopping off a toe to get out of military service.
As for libero’s anti-Catholic fulminations…”Hundreds of thousands of molested children”? Where do you get your statistics? It’s been a serious problem in recent years, but one could just as well say that hundreds of
A priest in the 1980s, at Georgetown U, I think, wrote that a problem would explode in the near future, with molestation of boys by clergy, because fewer hetero and more homosexuals (who were hiding it) were entering the priesthood. Bear in mind, before anyone goes off about homophobia, that priests are around boys far more than girls, and a person who was entering the priesthood with all the entailed requirements of carnal renunciation, and is concealing but not controlling his sexual proclivities, is probably not of a healthy psyche.
That being said, you really owe it to logic to check stats before you throw out figures like “hundreds of thousands” of molested children. If it were that many and so totally negative in its activities the Catholic church would have died out long ago.
She was escaping violence that was inflicted upon her (I think a 13 year old’s marriage is nothing other than violence, i know it was in 1920s and all that, still). The fact that she chose to dedicate her life to church is nothing other than a mere personal choice. A good number of christian families in the past used to devote atleast one of their children to church – in this case at least, it seems to be her choice.
smacks forehead
Yes, devout Hindus are superior to devout Christians. Thanks for settling that theological battle.
It is sad that some of us are so miserable that we can’t celebrate anyone’s life without trying to push our agenda through such posts.
You folks are eulogising her. I am sympathising with her fate. I am not convinced that it was faith that made her who she was – it was coercion by organised religion.
M. Nam
that sounds like people riding around a race track on the backs of nuns.
Whether or not there have really been “hundreds of thousands” of children molested by priests — and I agree that concrete statistics are helpful in any argument — I think that this statement contains an obvious logical flaw for anyone with even a basic knowledge of history:
No, no, no. The Catholic church may have had as many positive effects as any other religious institution, but neither in evolution nor in human history do things die out simply because they are harmful. If a trait or institution can still perpetuate itself, it doesn’t matter how harmful it is, it will survive.
ANNA: maybe that wasn’t how your exhortation to be respectful came across to anyone else 🙂 . I read it that way only because you seemed to be saying it wasn’t even a question of whether something is “interesting,” so I thought you were rejecting Amardeep’s approach. To me it is about finding an interesting way to talk about these things, and finding an interesting way requires exercising our empathy — I strongly believe that we should always try to put ourselves in the shoes of a person who seems “crazy”/”evil”/”stupid.” But it seems now that we’re on the same page and it was merely a matter of wording!
You folks are eulogising her. I am sympathising with her fate. I am not convinced that it was faith that made her who she was – it was coercion by organised religion.
That’s just one way of reading it. Alternatively, it might be that it was the coercion of her family in trying to marry her off that made the Church so desirable to her. Marriage coercion would be cultural, not religious.
It might be worth reminding readers that no one really knows for sure what happened. The story of intentional self-injury might not be true…
29 · Puliogre in da USA said
Oh, I loved “nunstakes”. Though for me, it conjured up balloons and Ed McMahon holding a big
checkpapal announcement, a la Publisher’s Clearing House…Whether or not there have really been “hundreds of thousands” of children molested by priests — and I agree that concrete statistics are helpful in any argument
Concrete Statistics
Wikipedia link on molestation and catholic church – one can do the tally themselves, it has lot of cross links, with statistics for different countries, from multiple sources.
You can easily get a ballpark figure of reported cases.
From “Lessons in Miracles from Kerala, South India: Stories of Three ‘Christian’ Saints” in History of Religions, Vol. 39, No. 2, Christianity in India (Nov., 1999), pp. 150-176, which I found via JSTOR (let me know if you want it):
Alphonsa’s story, as told not only by her pilgrimage pamphlets but also by devotees, is primarily one of suffering. Official hagiography depicts her agony as lifelong and multidimensional: she was raised by a stern foster mother (her biological mother died shortly after Alphonsa was born), teased by schoolchildren, and later endured serious illness throughout most of her twelve years as a Clarist sister. Emphasized in songs sung and accounts given by devotees are Alphonsa’s later years of painful suffering, beginning with her courageous leap into a smoldering ash pit, causing severe bums to her legs. To resist her foster mother’s attempts to arrange her marriage, Alphonsa reportedly underwent this self-immolation in order to make herself an unsuitable match, thus securing her future as a nun.[25] This focus on courageous self-sacrifice and bedridden agony in Sister Alphonsa’s later life places her squarely in the most common category for female Christian sainthood: “fortitude in illnes.”[26]
note 25: A woman who deliberately burns herself as a form of resistance is a common motif in Indian folklore. See Velchuru Narayana Rao, “Epics and Ideologies: Six Telegu Folk Epics,” in Another Harmony: New Essays on the Folklore of India, ed. A. K. Ramanujan and Stuart Blackburn (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 140-41. For a discussion of this and other ways in which Alphonsa’s story resonates with Indian motifs of female sanctity, see Dempsey, Kerala Christian Sainthood (n. 4 above).
note 26: Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 234.
oops! Article author is Corinne G. Dempsey.
Umm, in all these cases, the organization/establishment/society erected obstacles to dedicating themselves to their beliefs: in fact, in all cases, they went through severe abnegation and emotional self-torture to stay steadfast.
Fire-walking, self-piercing, angapradakshinam, walking barefoot all the way up the stone hill to Sabarimala are all popular folk traditions to express faith among some Hindus.
22 · MoorNam said
Right you may be, MoorNam, about those particular saints. But given note 25 in the article I’ve quoted above, it would seem that Sister Alphonsa’s inspiration didn’t necessarily come from the Wicked West.
Excellent link Vivek, hopefully some may not be as quick to rush to judgment now.
It sounds like the intentional self-injury, true or not, is fairly marginal to her story – sure, it’s dramatic, but physical acts of self-abnegation are part of the larger package of renunciation that she seems to have chosen. What’s impressive to me is that she made this decision at such a young age (though choosing to dedicate oneself to a convent has, counterintuitively, been a way for women to assert their autonomy historically) and achieved the popular respect she did during a very short life. It would make a good film, actually.
There seems to be a nice crossover between her renunciation for Christ and the Hindu respect for renunciates too.
Religion is a touchy matter, and I’m a bit hesitant to comment. As Wittgenstein wrote, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”
But I find the process of beatification very curious. And then that makes me wonder about the purpose of the process.
First, by definition, there’ no material process that can define the spiritual. Even if someone invented a fantastic machine that could detect lingering DNA vibrations and magically pull up a brain scan of the Buddha, at the very moment he was sitting under the Bodhi Tree, still, it could not tell us if he was “Enlightened” — because that’s not a material state. If it can measured, it’s material, not transcendental. Similarly, it seems to me that “Being a Saint” also would be impossible to measure. (This is to be distinguished from simply “doing good actions” — which I believe do leave an imprint…biologically, karmically, etc.)
And besides, a person is or is not saintly based on how they live their life — they don’t become more saintly the moment someone else recognizes it.
And if by “Saint” all we mean is a kind of honor, like being knighted (“Sir Francis”), then that’s an institutional process — and ultimately one that’s political according to the winds of the day.
Which leads me back the original post. If this process is really a political one — who gets recognized and when (and who doesn’t) — then I wonder what’s going on by the selection of Sister Alphnsa at this time. Please do not mistake my questions as doubting her character. I’m wondering, rather, what message is being sent by others recognizing her now.
This note is not directed to anti-Catholics as an invitation to lump every conspiratorial theory together about the Vatican and some kind of world domination campaign that’s now trying to sweep India.
Rather, I’m hoping someone sincere can help me understand why this is not a political process. Or if it is admittedly at least partly political, then how do believers square that with the fact that politics has less-than-saintly agendas? I’m hoping someone sincere can frame this announcement for me in a way that makes me less skeptical about the motives behind it.
Maybe Indian Christians face this kind of question all the time; but I never really get to hear their answers. I’d be really grateful to hear any here. Thanks.
Regards to all, z
I have an Indian friend who got a hysterectomy in her twenties to avoid being forced to marry as is the custom in her particular culture and region.
A few of her friends also did not want to marry but because they did not do something as drastic, were forced.
What I mean by forced is that they were made to endure meeting after meeting with young men and their parents, also making excuse that they did not want those particular guys, hoping that eventually their families would grow tired with the routine and allow them to remain single. They did not. After a number of years of this routine they were told, “you must choose someone this year or face dire consequences”. They did. They are not happy.
At the same time living alone as a single woman in their culture, town and community is not an option. Also, the taka-poisa problem is a factor as well.
Anyone else as taken with her gorgeous eyebrows as I am?
I do think that this is an inherently political process, for example, the criteria and rate of canonization is different in different periods of history based on Vatican priorities. In fact, some of the orthodox process felt that JP II was indulging in pandering and representation politics when he fast tracked the process for MT (also because both JP II and MT shared a similar mystical and piety oriented view of Christianity).
On the topic of culture-related marriage coercion / pressure:
Indo-Asian News Service via NDTV
The BBC story said something about how Sister Alphonsa was chosen over Mother Teresa partly so that she could be a “fully Indian” saint, no? Indicated it was aimed at taking the air out of those who frame Christianity as a grand foreign missionary plot.
Ah, I didn’t pick up on that, but it makes sense. I had read that statement just in the context of this preceding paragraph in the article:
There are some parallels with the story of Zen Buddhist nun Ryonen, who burned her face in order to be taken on as a disciple.
If it were that many and so totally negative in its activities the Catholic church would have died out long ago.
I don’t know what the numbers are, but I suspect American Catholic institutions* aren’t finished feeling the aftershocks of the child abuse scandals. The way people like Cardinal Law shuffled around molesting priests – I don’t think the damage to the average Catholic’s morale should be underestimated. I look at people like my mother, who once threatened to stop helping me pay for university when I came out as an atheist, and who now cannot bring herself to attend or donate money to the Church, on the off chance it’s going into some sick priest’s legal fund. The change is dramatic and, even though it’s not a faith I share anymore, heartbreaking.
*I don’t mean to be America-centric, that’s just the only experience I can speak to.
Umm as far as I know Alphonso mangoes were named for this guy (Afonso De Albuquerque.)
Nice story Anna. I was in Kerala and Chennai recently and the history of Catholicism in the south is quite long and rich.
Zacko:
From what I know of the canonification process, it is a long drawn process with a lot of “red-tapism” (for the lack of better word). So, in all likelihood, there may not be any conspiracy theory that you are looking for.
What I find interesting about the process, is the accent on “two miracles”. Does anyone actually believe that Sister Alphonsa or Mother Teresa performed miracles (in the story-book definition of a miracle)? I am curious to know how the Vatican defines a miracle.
Male dominated societies and religions, what they make us women go through….