The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

As part of the sacred biographic preparations for beatification, what was still required in
Mother Teresa’s case was the completion and submission of a positio, a “comprehensive
biography”, which Kolodiejchuk expected to complete by 2003. With the announcement
in October 2002 of the formal recognition by the Vatican of a miracle attributed to
Mother Teresa, 52 it was widely expected that beatification would take place in Spring
2003, with likely canonisation shortly thereafter. And if there was any chance that the
‘Devil’s Advocate’ might be persuaded in any way by Hitchens’ critical biographic
findings, then the Pope also had the option of bypassing the procedures of the Sacred
Congregation to effect “canonisation through public acclamation”. 53
This examination of the posthumous social life of Mother Teresa’s biography and the
question of saint‐making has revealed the Catholic Church as an institution shot through
with biographic notions of greatness, exceptionality and exemplary lives to be followed
by its congregants. This biographic institutional edifice begins in the core of the upper
governing structures of the Vatican, where a range of offices and bureaucratic
procedures are continually immersed in representations and contestations over
hundreds of causes of sanctification. This feature of the Vatican’s political and economic
life also extends to the lowliest levels of Catholic institutions, to its school lessons and
church sermons, as the life stories of would‐be and declared saints are held up as lessons
of model lives.
virginity” (p 213). The prosecutorial role of the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ was jettisoned in 1983 (see Melinda
Henneberger, ‘The saints just keep marching in’).
52 The ‘miracle’ in question involved the supposed disappearance of an abdominal tumor after an alleged
cancer‐suffer, Monica Besra, of the Bengali village of Basra, applied a medallion with Mother Teresa’s
image to the site of her abdominal pain on the first anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death. While the
Vatican recognised this 1998 ‘miracle’, the supposed ‘cure’ was interpreted very differently by medical
staff of the local Balurghat Hospital and by Besra’s husband, Seiku Murmu, who complained of the
“jamboree” of the press at his doorstep, with “people coming with cameras every few hours or so”.
Meanwhile, Besra’s medical records at Balurghat Hospital went missing, allegedly taken away by the
Missionaries of Charity. See Subir Bhaumik, ‘What’s Mother Teresa go to do with it?’, Time, 21 October
2002.
53 Dominic Crossley‐Holland, ‘Fast‐track sainthood for Mother Teresa will keep the masses happy’;
John Follian, ‘Miracles muster for Mother Teresa’s sainthood’; Cape Times, 2 October 2002. Mother
Theresa’s beatification took place in 2003.
67