The Centre is all set to issue a coin in the honour of Kerala’s Sister Alphonsa, who will be declared a “saint” by the Vatican on October 12.
The Kerala Catholic becomes first Indian saint on October 12
NEW DELHI: The Centre is all set to issue a coin in the honour of Kerala’s Sister Alphonsa, who will be declared a “saint” by the Vatican on October 12.
The government would release the coin on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI conferring the sainthood on her. The Pope had announced Sister Alphonsa’s elevation as saint on March 1 after the Vatican’s consistory of cardinals meeting in Rome cleared her case.
This is the first time in the 2000 years of Catholic Church history that an Indian, and that too a woman, is being conferred the honour.
Sister Alphonsa, popularly known as Annakutty before she joined the Franciscan Clarist Convent at Bharananganam (central Kerala) on August 2, 1928, was beatified (the last step on the path to sainthood) in 1986 by the late Pope John Paul II with another Catholic priest Blessed Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Kottayam (central Kerala), on his first visit to India.
Former Kerala chief minister Oomen Chandy, KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala and Kerala Congress (M) chief KM Mani had called on finance minister P Chidamabram on May 29 with the request for the coin. Chidambaram promptly agreed as it was a “national honour”.
The sainthood process of Mother Teresa, who was beatified by the Pope on October 19, 2003, after Vatican investigators recognised the miracle healing of an Indian woman cancer patient on her intervention, is not yet complete.
Earlier, Gonsalo Garcia of Vasai in Maharashtra was canonised in 1862, but he was born to a Portuguese father and Indian mother.
Sister Alphonsa was beatified after a handicapped boy of Kottayam was cured on praying at her tomb in Bharananganam. She was born on August 19, 1910, in Kudamaloor near Kottayam and died young at 37, on July 28, 1946.
PC Thomas, an independent MP from Kerala, had first raised the coin issue in the Lok Sabha.
The RSS and the Shiv Sena had last year opposed the release of a Rs2 coin which allegedly had an emblem of the cross.
RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav, however, said, “I have not heard any instance of a coin-release in the name of a religious person.”
He said personally he did not find anything objectionable in issuing “a coin in the honour of some person of our country, if that person is respected by a section of people”, but the RSS would take a view on it after the government’s announcement.
k_benedict@dnaindia.net
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