Centre for Romanian Studies

‘You know, my dear boy, Catholicism is a very good religion to die in’.
She left all her millions to the Vatican, to consecrate her in a gigantic statue in the guise of Virgin Mary, no less, opposite a copy of a gigantic ‘Christ the Redeemer’, of Rio de Janeiro, only, this time, perched on an African mountain peak. In her lifetime she was no saint, to put it mildly, but she compensated by her good looks. You know? She was not unattractive and many a hopeful bachelor passed between her bed sheets, hoping for a share of the spoils. When they did not succeed to woe her, she offered them an honourable exit, which they could hardly refuse: she made suicide respectable. After she became a reformed rake, only weeks before she died, she was persuaded that she was a reincarnation of Mother Theresa, as she retired to a Convent of Dominican nuns. Her less charitable friends and relations, being frustrated of the spoils of any material windfall, spread the rumour that ‘she now tried to seduce God’….

[Read more →]