Staying in Oakland California, he was billed as PASTOR, REV. SRI BISHOP MAZZINIANANDA MAHA THEKO, M.A., M.D., PH.D., D.SCI. LIT. He gave lectures on spiritual astronomy. The following appeared in the Oakland Tribune in around 1930: "Bishop Sri Mazziniananda, oldest Buddhist priest in the world, graduate of Oxford and Asiatic and European universities with high honors, for years a student of occult science and a self-styled protégé of the reputed mystics of the Himalaya monasteries in Tibet, came forward today with the remarkable assertion that he has made four visits to the red planet which tonight and tomorrow will be closest to earth it will come in many decades."
The San Francisco Chronicle also had a piece on him in about the same time (1930): "E. Leodi Ahmed Mazziniananda, bishop of the American Buddhist Church of Dharma, with headquarters at 1245 Market St. in San Francisco, is 104 years old and expects to live many more years. The bishop was educated by the Dalai Lama in Tibet and claims that people there sometimes live 150 years. He has smoked for 87 years and thinks Prohibition is foolish."
Time Magazine (December 21, 1931) carried his obituary: "Died. Dr. Sri Leodi Ahmed Mazzini-ananda, 106, Bishop of the American Buddhist Church of Dharma. friend of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with whose spirit he tried to communicate in July 1930; in Oakland, Calif."
He probably inspired the CD comic book series "White Lama."
Paul Carus, A Buddhist Prelate of California, The Open Court, vol. 26, no. 2 (February 1912) [=no. 669], pp. 65-84. Includes a "Buddhist High Mass."
S. Mazziniananda, Order of the Buddhist High Mass, with Music, The Open Court, vol. 26 (February 1912), pp. 71-84.
Surprisingly little seems to be known about this fascinating character. His name is a wonder of its own, an enviable combination of Gaelic, Arabic, Italian and Sanskrit. It seems likely the "Mazzini" segment of his name was taken from Giuseppe Mazzini (1805 –1872), a well-known Italian political exile and for some time a member of the Carbonari.
