“I Believe in Miracles” from the BBC shows how miracles and saints are vital to the emotional and financial power of the Catholic Church. Six million pilgrims per year visit Lourdes, most of them reportedly hoping for a miracle cure from the Lady of Lourdes, who is said to have cured in 87 cases since her visions of the ‘Immaculate Conception’. Despite that, no cure has been confirmed there by the Committee which decides on this since 1987. This does not stop people believing that they have been cured or that others have. That is the name of the game – involving hope, faith, confession, conviction, desperation and witnessing to the Lord’s power etc. The funds for eight churches in Lourdes have been gathered and business is booming – all kinds of bric-a-brac from icons to rosaries – and bizarrely not even excluding Lourdes ‘pill boxes’ (to supply the very big market of uncured pill-takers, no doubt).This souvenir business is also very flourishing around and inside Sai Baba’s ashrams in Puttaparthi and Whitefield, which function like Lourdes in drawing thousands from abroad, raising their counterfeit hopes and lifting real money from them.
While the Catholic Church has recognised 10,000 saints since the practice began, five hundred new saints have been created since the Church reduced the number of miracles required for sainthood from four to two in 1982. Meanwhile, 2, 500 alleged new miracle saints are currently under consideration for canonization. Of all saints so far, 8 are from the USA! One of these is Mother Theodore Guerin from Haute Terre, Indiana, who cured Phil McCord – who worked at her convent – of blindness after he prayed to her (he says he did so only once too). Compare this to the recent news that has come out about Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who prayed and prayed for her entire adult life but felt entirely deserted by God in every way, but kept on preaching and hoping in vain! (see here ) Some call it faith (but she stated she even lost her belief), others call it being trapped in delusion, the Christian net she had woven for herself and her own prestige. To recognise a cure as a miracle, the Catholic Church has a very strict routine, involving a Medical Board with 21 doctors who must investigate and agree that there are no other possible causes of recovery than prayer to the healing person. Further, before canonization, the proposed saint has to have an impeccable and unchallenged reputation. (That alone cuts out Sathya Sai as a future Catholic saint!)
As in Rome, so in Puttaparthi
The BBC programme series “The World Uncovered” also broadcast “The Secret Swami” about Sathya Sai Baba (see showcase, transcripts and short video clips here). The Pope lays on his hands, and Sai Baba lays them on too (see here) but unlike the Pope he also performs “miracles” in public. However, he has no medical board who sifts the data to check if miracles are genuine, and he is worshipped by numerous Indian doctors who are full-blown believers in his divinity and vouch for anything he says. No serious investigation of his miracles has ever been made, though the para-psychologists Erlendur Haraldsson and Karl Osis tried hard to get him to comply, but he rebuffed them. Haraldsson did investigate Sai Baba’s claim to have resurrected Walter Cowan from the dead, and found the doctors involved who denied any such thing. Otherwise he had to rely entirely on hearsay through interviews, and was unable to expose the faking and sleight-of-hand which has since been proven Sai Baba uses.
See Did Sai Baba resurrect Cowan from the dead?
Haraldsson questioned by Premanand
Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed 