Mother Teresa born 1910 in what is now called Macedonia and died in 1997 is to be declared a saint on 4 September of this year, Pope Francis has announced. Mother Theresa was loved and respected all over for her work with the poor in the Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta).
She founded a sisterhood that runs 19 homes, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
She was beatified in 2003 as a first step to sainthood.
The Pope cleared the way for sainthood last year when he recognised a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa.
Aged 19, she joined the Irish order of Loreto and in 1929 was sent to India, where she taught at a school in Darjeeling under the name of Therese.
In 1946 she moved to Kolkata to help the destitute and, after a decade, set up a hospice and a home for abandoned children.
She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. The sisterhood now has 4,500 nuns worldwide.
She achieved worldwide acclaim for her work in Kolkata’s slums, but her critics accused her of pushing a hardline Catholicism, mixing with dictators and accepting funds from them for her charity.
Five years after her death, Pope John Paul II accepted a first miracle attributed to Mother Teresa as authentic, clearing the way for her beatification in 2003.
He judged that the curing of Bengali tribal woman Monica Besra from an abdominal tumour was the result of her supernatural intervention.
A Vatican commission found that her recovery had been a miracle after the Missionaries of Charity said that the woman had been cured by a photo of the nun being placed on her stomach. The finding was challenged by rationalist groups in Bengal as being unfounded and fanciful.
In December 2015, Pope Francis recognized a second miracle, which involved the healing of a Brazilian man with several brain tumours in 2008. The man’s identity was not disclosed but the man was said to have been cured unexpectedly after his priest prayed for Mother Teresa’s intervention with God.
It often takes decades for people to reach sainthood after their death, but beatification was rushed through by Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis was known to be keen to complete the process during the Church’s Holy Year of Mercy which runs to November 2016. When she is finally named a saint it would have been a mere 19 years after her death, an unprecedented feat.
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