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INMATES of a monastery in the rural Missouri town of Gower, the United States, were surprised to find that the exhumed body of a deceased nun had no signs of decomposition.
Wilhelmina Lancaster, the founder of Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, had died four years ago, in May 2019, at the age of 95.
According to media reports, a few days ago, the nuns wanted to dig up the coffin of Lancaster and move it to the altar in the chapel inside the convent, as is the custom.
The nuns, who were expecting to find just bones in the coffin, were in for a surprise as they discovered that the body had not decomposed. The body had not been embalmed during burial.
The body of the deceased nun was covered in a layer of mould. As the news spread, people began flocking to the nunnery, with many calling it the “miracle of Missouri”, and Lancaster a “saint” as the Catholic church believes a non-decomposed body is a sign of holiness.
A sign next to the body reads: “Please, be gentle with touching sister’s body, especially her feet.” The body was on display till May 29, after which it was moved to the chapel.
While the nuns called it “a testament to her love for the sisterhood”, Nicholas Passalacqua, director of forensic anthropology at Western Carolina University, told Mirror.UK that the body may have been preserved due to the temperature, the environment the body is in, and if it was chemically treated.
“The warmer it is, the more active bacteria and enzymes will be and also the more active insect scavengers will be because their metabolisms are correlated to the ambient temperature,” he was quoted as saying.
The burial environment and method play a key role in the speed of decomposition of the body.
“If the body is in an oxygen-deprived environment, then this will significantly slow decomposition,” Passalacqua said.
“They were very well-preserved for thousands of years because they were in environments with low oxygen that restricted bacterial growth and access of the remains to scavengers,” he added. — Wires
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Congregants fight over money
There was drama recently at St John’s Apostolic Faith Mission in Bulawayo’s New Lobengula suburb when congregants fought during a service over what some members claimed was lack of transparency and mismanagement of funds by the church leadership.
Video footage of scenes typical of a nightclub brawl has since gone viral on social media. It shows the chaos that rocked the church service, with members insulting, pushing and shoving each other.
The footage, which is in our possession, shows a woman yelling at a male congregant, who had grabbed another by his neck and violently pushed him to the ground.
The woman is seen trying to quell the violence and asking why they were fighting.
Sadly, the church’s Bishop Vengayi Tapfuma unsuccessfully tried to restore order; he was violently pushed and fell down.
Sensing danger, other congregants bolted out of the church and watched the scene from outside. Some elders later stepped in and managed to stop the fight.
A source said lack of transparency in choosing the leadership and use of funds, as well as poor running of the church caused the ugly scenes. The source said some members accused Bishop Tapfuma of arbitrarily assigning duties to individuals not chosen by the church council.
“Some congregants were not happy that there was lack of transparency in the running of the church and they were also bitter that the bishop disregards the church council in making decisions, as he only consults his son Tapfuma Jr,” said the source.
“There are positions which are occupied by people who were chosen by the church council but the bishop assigns duties to church members who were not chosen to do those jobs,” said the source.
The source added: “His son Tapfuma Jr is also using the church’s premises to run a private school and despite the fact that the learners are paying, there is, however, no transparency in the use of those funds paid by the learners.”
The source said all these complaints sparked a fight during a church service.
Efforts to get a comment from the bishop did not yield results. His son Tapfuma Jr declined to comment, saying all questions should be addressed to the congregants during a church service.
“I cannot comment on that matter. It is better you come to church on a Sunday and ask the church congregants,” he said.
The ugly scenes came hardly a few months after the bishop was humiliated by junior pastor Edmore Mangombe, who used to tell him to shut up and stop lying each time he was on the pulpit. The troubled Tapfuma claimed whenever he started preaching, Mangombe would stand up, and when church elders tried to tell him to sit down, he would ignore them.
He said he had been doing that for the past five years, adding that Mangombe had also threatened him with unspecified action before the end of the year. — B-Metro
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