Saint Stalin and Saint Che
A friend just gave me the “creepy” news that some people want to canonize “Saint Stalin”.
Saint Che?
Interesting, since I recently read that Ernesto “Che” Guevara is already considered a saint in parts of Bolivia. And, to be honest, Stalin I could do without – a Saint Che would be more my cup of tea.
Just think of the possibilities: whenever I run into one of those annoying rich spoilt brats wearing a T-shirt of “that dude” like he’s some arbitrary Andy Warhol creation, I can now tell them that they’re mocking my religion, ahem, and would they please remove it?
And then, as soon as the twits have forgotten all about him, I could maybe finally get a Che T-shirt of my own without anyone knowing I’m a copycat.
Seriously, though: whether the notion of “Saint Stalin” remains fringe or not remains to be seen. What’s creepy about it, of course, is that Stalin was anything but a saint.
Or was he? Maybe what we’re witnissing here is that the way people are remembered by history has little to do with their real character. Who knows what bastards the “real” saints were – or not? If we could go back in time and tell one of his contemporaries that Francis of Assissi has been sainted, would they snicker, stand slack-jawed, or cheer?
Somewhat the opposite seems to be occurring with Mother Teresa. During her lifetime she was mostly perceived as saintly; only now after her death are the allegations about child abuse by the “Ghoul of Calcutta” surfacing more widely:
In brief, the report said that handicapped children were maltreated in the orphanage… Untold millions of dollars flowed into her coffers. The money was not used to build even one small hospital anywhere. In her homes, it was even forbidden to hand out simple painkillers. She, in the meanwhile, got jetted around to hospitals in the US whenever she was suffering some illness.
Perhaps the safest thing to conclude from all this is that people are really, really, desperately willing to believe in unsullied heroes.