Saint Lucy’s Day. The patron saint of the blind, was a young lass whose father left her a substantial dowry upon his death. The proposed husband did not take kindly to Lucy giving away her dowry and reported her Christian charity to the Roman authorities. The Roman governor had her placed in a brothel but when she gouged out her eyes and offered them to a customer who had said he loved her eyes, the brothel realized that Lucy was bad for business and had her condemned to death.
It is with some considerable irony then that Balthazar John Vorster, the drunk who was Minister of Justice during the Rivonia Trial that saw Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment and subsequently ran South Africa as Prime Minister for almost 12 years through the 1976 Soweto uprising, was born in 1915 on the feast day of the patron saint of the blind.
– Posted by Douglas Racionzer (serendipiday.blogspot.com)