SAINTS AND EMPTY TILLS

For hundreds of years the Pope ruled supreme in the Vatican and never ventured beyond its sacred environs. In recent times though less and less people are swallowing the medieval nonsense that is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and he is forced to become a sort of Thomas Cook tourist. The current holy father looks like beating all records in air miles as he tries to whip up enthusiasm for a growingly unattractive organisation. He recently visited Britain and declared the prospect of sainthood for an English convert. Now concerned about falling attendances in North America he is about to canonise a Canadian doorman. "A Canadian monk who began life as a sickly, illiterate orphan before becoming a porter is to be canonised at the Vatican on Sunday. Alfred Bessette was renowned in the late 19th century as the diminutive doorman of Montreal's College of Notre Dame, whose hands were said to have powers of healing. ... He began his life at the college in 1870 as a porter. "Our superiors put me at the door, and I remained there for 40 years," he said later." (Daily Telegraph, 15 October) As an organisation that claim to have the keys to heaven they could do worse than make a doorman a saint. They have got to get those empty collection bags full somehow. RD