Testing times and a rub of the relic Furthermore Gerry Moran

e weather is up and that can only mean one thing – it’s exam time (oh, and summer may also be upon us.) I don’t know why, but the sun always seems to shine come examination time. In fact the rst question on every exam paper should read: “Why is it always sunny when the exams commence?”

From Primary Cert to ird Level, my memory of exams is always of a hot sun beating down on my tense, anxious body wrestling with Macbeth, the Lady of Shalott or Pythagoras’ eorem. However, even more so than the weather, I always associate exams with religion. I couldn’t count the number of exams I have sat in my lifetime, yet I never sat one of those exams alone as one should. To my fellow students I seemed to be alone.

To the supervisor I most certainly appeared to be on my own but the truth is I always had company. I was always surrounded by saints, my mother’s favourite saints. It is a recognised fact in our household that not one of our family got through an examination on his, or her, own merit alone. We each of us, my three sisters, my brother and myself had assistance. Divine Assistance that was brokered for us by my mother’s prayers and devotion. My mother’s preparations for her children’s exams started weeks in advance; rosaries were said, novenas were made and masses were o ered up. Shrines were visited, candles were lit and in the dim light of hushed churches all around Kilkenny, a host of saints was petitioned for their intercession in the academic trials that lay ahead of her children. Indeed I did a fair bit of petitioning myself. e most important religious ritual, however, commenced the morning of the exam itself and would be repeated daily until the last test paper was handed up. Calmly and rever- ently my mother would take down her precious cache of relics from a discreet corner of the kitchen press and commence the ceremony. Carefully unwrapping the soft tissue covering, she would make the sign of the cross on my eyes, my hands and nally my temple (as near as she could get to the brain) with each relic all the while whispering aspiration after aspiration to the particular saint in question. e relics most favoured by her were those of Saint Gerard Majella (after whom I was christened), Saint Anthony (who never let her down) and the aforementioned Blessed Martin De Porres whose relic was given to her by a saintly Dominican, a friend of the family. When my mother’s ritual concluded I was handed the relics, blessed myself with them then carefully placed them in a shallow, tin box next to my pens, pencils and mathematical instruments. I dutifully repeated the ritual in the examination hall before the start of each test. What the supervisor or my fellow students thought of my antics I have no idea. However, so fervent was my belief, so strong was my faith that I never gave a thought as to what they might be thinking; to paraphrase a recurring theme in Dale Carnegie’s book: “How to Win Friends and In uence People”, if the saints are for me, who could possibly be against me! Not one of our family, I am glad to report, ever failed an exam. Whether this was due to the rub of the relic, natural intelligence, hard work or a combination of all three I’ll never know. is much, however, I do know – if I had dared produce those same relics and re-enacted my mother’s ritual the mornings of my children’s exams, they would have looked at me in bewilderment and wondered what class of witchcraft I was practising!

Many’s the prayer I whispered in the side aisle of the Capuchin Friary to Saint Joseph of Cupertino, the patron Saint of Examinations. Joseph wasn’t exactly bursting with brains but he was lucky enough (and prayerful enough) to be asked the only questions he knew come the day of reckoning. Every student’s saint for sure. And many’s the candle I lit below in the Black Abbey, in particular to Saint Martin de Porres to whom our family had a special devotion. Although he was only Blessed at the time we regarded him as a saint and petitioned him on that basis for favours. And in fairness I don’t believe he ever let us down.

Since leaving o ce in 1977, Kissinger’s brand of realpolitik – the coldly cynical championing of power and national interests – has largely fallen out of favour as his successors preached moralism, but Kissinger himself has if anything enjoyed greater repute.

Ahead of his centennial, Kissinger blew candles on a cake at a celebratory luncheon at the Economic Club of New York, the city where he grew up after his Jewish family ed Nazi Germany.

Showing his worldview has not changed at the century mark, Kissinger cautioned for the United States to stay within the bounds of “vital interests,” telling the guests, “We need to be always strong enough to resist any pressures.”

Bucking the view of most US policymakers, Kissinger called for diplomacy with Russia on a cease re in Ukraine, arguing that Moscow has already su ered a strategic defeat.

An unlikely playboy in 1970s Washington, Kissinger lives in an apartment on New York’s Park Avenue. He has grown wealthy consulting businesses through his relationships in China – and has warned the United States against treating Beijing as a new Cold War-style adversary.

Long despised by the left, Kissinger has come into the good graces of the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Hillary Clinton after serving as secretary of state called Kissinger “a friend” and said she “relied on his counsel,” while the incumbent, Antony Blinken, teased Kissinger about his stylishness when the elder statesman attended a US State Department luncheon last year.

But for many, Kissinger was seen as an unindicted war criminal for his role in, among other events, expanding the Vietnam War to Cambodia and Laos, supporting military coups in Chile and Argentina, green-lighting Indonesia’s bloody invasion of East Timor in 1975 and turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s mass atrocities during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

“To me, there’s no doubt that his policies have caused hundreds of thousands of