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Bad World
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by Warren Ellis
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| BAD
NUN Mother Teresa is being put up for sainthood by the Vatican. There are a few minor impediments to the process — her devotion to certain blood-covered dictators and obvious thieves — but in general her devotion to the fight against abortion and contraception will doubtless see her get her big halo soon. However. One largish hurdle to such has just arisen. The Archbishop of Calcutta had her exorcised. Henry D’Souza, Archbishop, shared a hospital when they were both experiencing health problems. He couldn’t help but notice that the holy Mother’s usual peace and calm was shattered when night fell. In an "extremely agitated" condition, she would thrash, rip the monitoring wires and pads off her body — he doesn’t say she barked like a dog and won projectile vomiting contests, but, you know — we live in hope. A few nights of this, and D’Souza was convinced. Mother Teresa was under attack from Satan. In daylight, he approached her, explained his diagnosis, and obtained her agreement. D’Souza called in a fellow holy man and began to arrange a full-bore exorcism of Mother Teresa. "I told him, 'Please say the prayer of exorcism over Mother Teresa.' And he got a shock and said, 'Shall I pray and should I drive out the devil if it's there?'" "I said, 'Yes, you shall.' But he says, 'What will the devil do to me?' I said to him, 'You command the devil to go if he's there. In the name of the church, as archbishop, I command you to go and do it.'" One imagines that the great Archbishop of Calcutta was in fact hiding behind a wall during the rite. Apparently, afterwards, she slept like a baby. And continued in her work to take money from all over the world and build churches and convents in over 150 countries, never once doing so much as building a teaching hospital in overpopulated Calcutta, proclaiming in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech that abortion is the greatest single threat to world peace. "Today, Mother is with God. Now in his presence, she has more power with God. She is no more on an earthly level," one of her surviving associates says. "She has passed to eternal life. There she is very, very powerful." Warren Ellis Southend, England September 2001 |