Let dead nuns lay

India and Albania are currently having a squabble over the remains of Mother Teresa – Nun, Nobel Laureate and perpetual Jan to Princess Diana’s Marcia.

Ok. EW!!!!

Lets face it. She’s been buried a while, so unless someone did a better job of embalming her than they did of Lenin, she is probably not it a particularly appealing state by now.

But its worse than just digging up a dead old* lady, because what this really comes down to is a squabble over tourism revenue. Follow me on this one.

Nun (now dead) did great things. Said dead Nun will turn 100 next August – well, it will be 100 years since she was born, but you know what I mean. She is likely to be made a saint, or canonised as they call it – which to be honest sounds to me like they will be shooting her out of a big gun. That can’t really be that respectful, or good for her. Even if she was alive it could be messy, but dead? Well lets just hope someone has wet ones.

That aside, now Saint Said-Dead-Nun, will have a sea of god botherers coming to pray at her graveside, asking for her intervention with god in their ailments, problems, business ventures, gambling – you know, the usual thing people pray about. And here is where I feel the sandal hits the pavement.

Where you have pilgrims you have not only a bunch of people looking for answers outside themselves (rather than inside where the answers are much more likely to lie) you also have retail opportunities.

I don’t recall anyone running forward arms outstretched to snatch the corpse of Said-Dead-Nun from India when there was just an expensive state funeral involved, but now there is an opportunity to sell tasteful things like Mother Teresa bobble heads, its all kicking off.

If Albania, who are making the fuss now, just want to honour Mother Teresa and pay respect to the things she did, where her dead bodies lies should not matter. Spend the money and the energy helping the poor, rather than having a diplomatic incident over it. Think about it for a second – what would SHE have wanted?

*are dead people still old?