A patron saint for Bafana Bafana?

St Thérèse of Lisieux: a patron of Bafana Bafana?

I  was delighted to read in a recent issue of The Southern Cross that the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux will be coming to South Africa in June this year. As I read on, I was even more delighted — perhaps even leaning slightly towards thrilled — at the reason for this visit being because “millions of Catholics from all over the world would be descending on the country” for the football World Cup finals. My delight went straight through thrilled to full-blown overawed when I read that St Thérèse’s relics would “be a heaven-sent opportunity for the Church to play a crucial spiritual role in the World Cup”.

I had no idea St Thérèse of Lisieux was a football fan. I visited the many websites devoted to this young French saint, and nowhere on her extensive and impressive curriculum vitae was I able to find the fact that she might have been an ardent supporters of the Club de Lisieux Première Equipe football team. It seems to me that she spent so much time in prayer and spiritual contemplation in her very short life that trying to fit in time to head off to the local Stade de Soccer would have been well-nigh impossible.

And, of course, television and radio weren’t around in 19th century Europe. Saints in those days worked many miracles, but getting a box with a window to show moving pictures of football players was not one of them.

Then I had a dream. I was attending a celestial seminar at which all the saints had gathered to workshop their projects for 2010.

I distinctly remember St Matthew, the patron saint of bankers, being told to stop messing about behind the scenes and to start appearing in person to wayward investment bankers to read them the riot act on the subject of greed and interest rates.

But the saint upon whom the most pressure was being put was St Jude. He had an awful lot heaped on his plate, and he complained long and loud about not being able to be in a thousand places at the same time. He muttered something about not particularly liking to work on politicians and slouched off mumbling about it being high time he was given another portfolio, such as wine merchants or chocolate makers.

During the lunch break, conversations turned to sport, and the fact that very few sporting codes had their own patron saints. This in turn developed into a discourse on the amount of money involved in staging the World Cup in South Africa, which in turn ended up with a debate on what chances the host nation would have of winning the cup.

St Jude immediately threw his hands up and said: “Look, leave me out of this — that’s a desperate cause even I am not prepared to have a go at…” St Thérèse, who was sitting quietly in a corner chatting to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, raised her head, looked at St Jude and whispered: “Oh thou of little faith…”

A phalanx of saints turned on her and exclaimed: “OK, bigmouth, you do it.”

St Thérèse blanched and bit her lip, mentally kicking herself for speaking out at so inopportune a moment. Now, though her self-styled sobriquet is “The Little Flower”, there is nothing small about her courage. “Fine”, she said, “but terms and conditions will apply.”

The first and most important of these was that she would not travel to South Africa in person as a protest against the way in which all the airlines had increased their fares out of all proportion over the World Cup period. She even stamped her foot to emphasise the point. Mother Teresa gave her the thumbs-up and an encouraging wink.

So it was decided that just her relics would make the trip. St Peter mischievously whispered to Michael the Archangel something about Bafana Bafana not being much more than a relic of their former selves anyway.

Regrettably, I woke up before I could determine just which of St Thérèse’s relics would be coming to South Africa. But I know for sure that if Bafana Bafana have enough faith in their abilities, The Little Flower could quite easily see them through to lifting the World Cup against absolutely all the odds — and then a few dozen more odds as well.