The Vatican said Friday that Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa’s intercession during an audience with the head of the Vatican’s saint-making office on Thursday, his 79th birthday. “Today (December 18, 2015) we received an official confirmation from the Vatican about the second miracle being recognised by the Pope and Mother will be accorded sainthood in 2016”, said Mother Teresa-founded Missionaries of Charity’s spokesperson Sunita Kumar.
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The move comes after a panel of experts, convened three days ago by the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, attributed a miraculous healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours to Mother Teresa, Avvenire newspaper reported.
A second miracle was later attributed to her, meaning she was eligible for canonisation – the process of making someone a saint.
Her Missionaries of Charity helped the poor on the streets of the city, now known as Kolkata. Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
The Pope judged the curing of an Indian girl struggling with an abdominal tumour was the effect of the unnatural intervention of Mother Teresa with God – a claim challenged by Indian rationalists. Months later, she left for India, landing in the city then known as Calcutta in January 1929, where she taught at St. Mary’s School for girls. Funding for her Missionaries of Charity has also been questioned and its members have been accused of resisting modern methods of hygiene.
In this file picture taken, 12 April 1995, Mother Teresa smiles as she poses for photographers in Calcutta. “Look at the work she did, not a day’s holiday, not a day’s rest”.
Holy See spokesman Thomas Rosica said in a tweet that Mother Teresa should be canonized, or pronounced a saint, in September. Here’s how she once described herself: “By blood, I am Albanian”.
Mother Teresa was criticised by some for her staunch Catholic beliefs on abortion and divorce, and for accepting the Legion d’honneur from Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.
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One of her most vocal detractors was the British-born author Christopher Hitchens. By citizenship, an Indian.
