Mick Hartley

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Going for Sainthood

Given recent events you can understand why the Vatican might want to push this:

A British nun who helped to hide Italian Jews from the Nazis in wartime Rome has been put forward as a candidate for sainthood.

Mother Ricarda Beauchamp Hambrough played a vital role in saving the lives of more than 60 Jews by smuggling them into her convent. Her order, the Bridgettines, founded in the 14th century, has now sought permission from the Vatican to examine her life and writings for evidence of “heroic virtue”, the first step to beatification and, ultimately, canonisation. She could join three other British women being considered by Rome for sainthood.

You'd think saving the lives of more than 60 Jews would be enough. But no:

Ricarda’s case is in its earliest stages and requires evidence of two miracles.

So perhaps if one of those 60 Jews had a bunion, and Mother Ricarda touched it and the next morning it'd disappeared,,. Or a slight headache, maybe, and she came up with a holy wafer, and within the hour – pouff! – like it'd never happened. That's what we want from saints.

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2 responses to “Going for Sainthood”

  1. Laban Tall Avatar
    Laban Tall

    “You’d think saving the lives of more than 60 Jews would be enough”
    No, nor 60,000, nor any number of any ethnicity. That’s called being a good person, a heroine, indeed displaying heroic virtue.
    Sainthood MUST involve evidence of God’s intervention. That’s what being a saint means (and I think you probably know that). While being a good egg is a necessary condition it’s not sufficient.

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  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Well yes, that was part of my point. There’s no evidence, as far as I can see, for anything miraculous at all in this nun’s behaviour. (Not, I hasten to add, that I’d believe them if they did come up with something.) She merely did what you’d have thought anyone with some degree of decency and courage would have done in her situation. Yet such is the Church’s need for heroes in what was not, on the whole, a particularly heroic period for them, that they’re pushing for a sainthood for someone who was, simply, a good person. But by their own lights this requires some evidence of miraculous bunion-curing or the like.

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