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Time of India
21-04-2025
- General
- Time of India
From sending money to posting Vatican stamps for kids, Goa's Sr Lucy remembers her last boss
Panaji: Sister Lucy Britto , a Goan nun who worked for 16 years in the Vatican and served three Popes, told TOI that she would remember Pope Francis as a humble pope with simple yet deep thoughts; one who was interested in building relationships and reaching out to the poorest of the poor. Sister Lucy, who is now retired in Candolim, worked in the archives section of the Vatican secretariat. There, she sifted through a sea of mail for the Pope. This ranged from greetings to letters of appreciation, requests for prayers, requests for help to sort out family disputes, and even drawings from little children. The Sisters of Charity nun, born and raised in Cuncolim, recalls the time a child wrote in, sending a few coins in Euros, asking Pope Francis to send an equivalent amount back in Vatican currency. 'I remember Pope Francis sending double the amount in Vatican currency back to the child,' she said. 'If a child asked for a favour, he would never disappoint them,' she said, adding that he would also often oblige children who asked for stamps of the Vatican and post them to the sender. Besides being proficient in French, Sister Lucy also picked up Polish and German on the job. Hindi and Marathi come naturally to her, and she also has a good command of Portuguese and Spanish. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like AI guru Andrew Ng recommends: Read These 5 Books And Turn Your Life Around in 2025 Blinkist: Andrew Ng's Reading List Undo When Pope Francis met the staff at the secretariat, it was always an occasion to look forward to, she said. 'After Pope Francis became Pope in 2013, all the staff queued up to meet him. I did a 'namaste', told him my name, and that I was Indian,' she said. 'He was like a father figure to us. He wouldn't ask us about work but how we were. It was more about the person than the work,' she said, adding that his sense of humour would catch them off-guard. At the first meeting with the staff, he noticed each staff member taking out their phones to photograph him, and told them not to publish his photos. At the next meeting, in jest, he asked them where their phones were and why they hadn't taken them out of their pockets. Sr Lucy's last meeting with him was on her last day in office in 2019. 'He asked me where I was going, and I told him I was returning to my country, India. He smiled, said 'very good', and gifted me a big rosary, which is very precious to me,' she told TOI . Sr Lucy also witnessed from close quarters two Papal conclaves — which elected Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. She was a close witness, eagerly watching from her window as white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel after the cardinals voted via secret ballot. 'I didn't have to go anywhere to find out the outcome of the voting. I watched from my own window and saw with my own eyes the smoke rising.' 'I can tell you Pope Francis was interested in families and in political affairs for the sake of maintaining peace and unity in the world. He cared for the poor, the prisoners, and nature too,' she said.
Telegraph
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Doubt: A wintry Maxine Peake compels in this twisting parable about unsubstantiated accusations
'Doubt' and 'Maxine Peake' are not words I'd normally put together – the actress is such a strict socialist she once described Labour voters who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Jeremy Corbyn as 'Tory as far as I'm concerned'. But perhaps there's something self-reflective at play in her choice of project at Bath. John Patrick Shanley's oft-revived Tony-winning 2004 play proffers neat testament to the perils of self-certainty. Drawing on the author's own experience, it's set in 1964 in a Catholic church school in the Bronx, a fortress against the era's liberation presided over by nuns whose vigilance about sinfulness is a repressive constant. In Lindsay Posner's compact, deft revival, Peake takes the leading role (played in the 2008 film by Meryl Streep) of Sister Aloysius, the principal whose beady eye misses nothing but whose focus is so exacting it permits no grey areas, and thus is apt to overlook the messy complexity of human behaviour. The actress is well-suited to the icy rigour of the character, her face glaring out from under a mourning-black bonnet, every inch of her at once burning with zeal and shiver-making winter made flesh. Her office almost an interrogation cell, she quizzes first a recent addition to the 'Sisters of Charity' order, an altogether too sunnily disposed teacher called Sister James (a sweetly demure Holly Godliman), taking her to task for her lapses of forgiving liberalism. The main object of her sedentary admonishments and gradually declared suspicions, though, is lonely Father Flynn whose sermon on the value of doubt amid the flux of faith we've heard at the start. What we haven't been shown, though, are the interactions between Flynn and a troubled black altar boy that have had Aloysius quivering with alarm. The piece is composed with a twisting mixture of tightening noose and saving slack – just who are we really to believe? Ben Daniels' vigorously animated Flynn is rattled by insinuations that turn into accusations; is he affirming his innocence or confirming his guilt? For all her hermetic nature might his tormentor have the measure of a predator, even if only a potential one? We're in a world rather reminiscent of The Crucible – in which moral hysteria collides with personal failings, everything also bound up with severe social constraints. The neatness, though, is as much a curse as a blessing; we mainly wait, like meek pupils, for the next partial revelation. Though matters boil bitterly to a head, our emotional investment remains quite limited; who to root for, who to feel moved by? Yes, the play catches the crushing prejudices of the era, and speaks, too, to the cancel-culture of today. Yet it doesn't feel wholly like a modern classic. The plot, as such, thickens with the arrival of the boy's mother (Rachel John, a picture of dignity and contained hurt) – ushering in a valuable note of reproving compromise and compassion. But at the abrupt end of 90 minutes, there's a faint tang of thin gruel.
