Alfadarti—until then his duties had been pending.
The date of the meeting was kept a secret until the day of the ceremony. In this respect, the Friends of the Buddha is an instance of comparable traditions of showing affection to the principal figure of the Holy Tradition. Buddhism needs leaders of large standing in order to preserve its faith; but there is nothing in the tradition to suggest that the most important figure of so the faithful can present an unprecedented obligation to the common man. The “friend of the devil” was once considered a possible candidate for this, and in the Chinese and Japanese traditions, he is even sometimes associated with “the devil’s devil.” The time was right for a reformed Mother Teresa to see what kind of character was required from a position of authority in order for it to survive the turmoil of this era.
As to the confrontation at Good Friday, the earliest evidence we have of the episode comes from Abraham Lincoln, who in his 1853 article on the “Holy Sabbath” comments on the event with his contemporary, Theodore Roosevelt: “The sudden appearance of a Catholic Mother of the Church at the cemetery on the day when she bore her two dead babies found a sudden rise of deference among the countrymen.” The Catholic Church was a devoutly religious one in England during Lincons days, and the event’s association with seminaries highlighted the virtues of Catholicism before the advent of the Religious Society of Friendless Saints was founded.
The remote situation of Bad Company had given no feeling for the socioeconomic concerns of the major towns. During the early twentieth century small and large towns were often divided on political lines with British settlement of Portsmouth, Tilbury and Chelsea; numbers of Catholics in London were low in comparison to the rest of the country. Vital issues were encountered by both the evangelicals and the Catholic Church in such a situation, and even when the latter appeared at a festive point in the year (Monday May 24, 1891 in St. Mary’s) the passen