Quote:She was beatified in 2003 as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta for healing an Indian woman's tumor through divine intervention, but full sainthood requires the declaration of two miracles.
What, the tumour that doctors say responded to medical treatment?
Quote:On September 5 1998, the first anniversary of Mother Teresa's death, two nuns tied an oval medallion bearing a picture of Mother Teresa to Monica Besra's stomach. Her subsequent cure was hailed as a miracle.
This is the act of "divine intervention" that underpins Mother Teresa's controversial beatification, due to take place on October 19, and forms the cornerstone of the claim being made for her eventual sainthood. The televised ceremony planned by the Vatican will be the climax of a week of celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary of John Paul II's election. But the elevation of the Albanian-born Agnes Gonxha Bojahiu into Blessed Teresa of Calcutta has its detractors.
Some of the doctors who treated Monica Besra, for example, say that there is no evidence of a miracle. They say that her tumour was not fully grown and that her condition responded to medical treatment.
"This miracle claim is absolute nonsense and should be condemned by everyone," Dr Ranjan Kumar Mustafi, of Balurghat Hospital in West Bengal, said. "She had a medium-sized tumour in her lower abdomen caused by tuberculosis. The drugs she was given eventually reduced the cystic mass and it disappeared after a year's treatment."
Her husband initially shared this scepticism. "This miracle is a hoax," he told an interviewer last year. "It is much ado about nothing. My wife was cured by the doctors." Since then, however, he is full of praise for Mother Teresa and her order.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
