First Indian layman beatified
Our first story is something we covered in part last summer. That
was when Pope Benedict placed two Indian laymen on the road to canonization.
One of them was 18th century Hindu convert Devasahayam
Pillai, whom His Holiness recognized as a martyr.
As you probably know, Hinduism relies on a firmly
entrenched caste system, and Pillai was born in 1712 as a member of one the upper
castes. He entered the royal bureaucracy and was a close advisor of King
Marthanda Varma.
However, when he and his wife became Catholics in 1745, the
King and others in the upper castes became extremely upset, and His Majesty demanded
that he revert to Hinduism.
The Church claims his refusal to do so is why he was arrested
in 1749 and martyred in 1752.
With the affirmation of his martyrdom and the miracle, the
Church was able to beatify Bl. Devasahayam, which it did on December 2, in Nagercoil,
India. And if you want to know where that is, it’s easy: Just pull out any global
map and look at the very bottom of that country. That is where the
beatification took place.
According to Eurasia
Review, “Over thousand priests and nuns … [attended] … the event,” as did
many “Political leaders.”
He is the first Indian lay blessed. His feast is
January 14.
This one really excites me. When the Pope met with
representatives of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on December 20, he
approved making venerable nine Servants of God (including Pope Paul VI), he
declared 34 Servants of God as martyrs, which effectively makes them blesseds,
he ratified miracles for five venerables—which puts them in line for
beatification, as well—and he declared miracles legitimate for 802 blesseds,
which means they’ll soon be declared saints.
Wait! What?! Eight hundred and two blesseds had their
miracles approved? Yep, that’s right. Two were women religious who founded orders,
and the other 800 were martyrs at Otranto, a city on the far southeastern side
of Italy.
What happened was this. In the late 1400s, the same Muslim
sultan who had conquered Constantinople in 1452 decided he wanted to conquer
Rome. So he sent a huge fleet that was supposed to land at Bari. It was a great
plan, except the Islamic armada got blown off course and had to land in
Otranto. The people of that city fought bravely for two weeks before the Muslim
forces finally broke through the city’s walls.
After this, the conquerors killed the oldest and youngest,
enslaved the children under 15 and the women, and they gave the men 15 to 65
twenty-four hours to make a choice: Lose your Catholic faith or lose your head.
Every one of these 800 men chose to lose their head.
Their leader was an old tailor named Antonio Primaldi, who
was so strong in exhorting his fellow Otrantans to stand firm that the Muslim
commander saw to it that his head was chopped off first. However, then the unexpected happened. Bl. Antonio’s headless body is said to have stood and remained standing despite efforts to topple it until the last condemned man had given his life. This witness was supposedly so powerful, that one of the Muslim soldiers converted on the spot. He, too, was quickly dispatched.
No word yet on when the canonization will take place.
No comments:
Post a Comment
When commenting, be charitable, be kind, be loving. Say nothing you would not say to Jesus himself.