The Roman Catholic nun and missionary, who dedicated her life to helping relieve others’ financial plights and healing their physical ailments, had previously been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and beatified as the “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta” in 2003.
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She was also accused of trying to convert the destitute in predominantly Hindu India to Christianity, a charge her order has repeatedly denied.
Mother Teresa (R) gives her blessing to a child at the Gift of Love Home on October 20, 1993 in Singapore.
Mother Teresa’s canonisation ceremony is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Rome and TV viewers across the world.
Kolkata, as the former capital of the British Raj is now called, is holding prayers, talks and cultural events.
Archbishop of Vasai Dr. Felix Machado will be conducting a special mass at Blessed Mother Teresa Church near Virar station on Sunday while the Pontiff will be announcing sainthood.
The low-key mood reflects an often-heated debate over religious intolerance in India, a predominantly Hindu country of 1.3 billion people.
Although she dealt with severely impoverished people in Calcutta, Mother Teresa saw the spiritual poverty of Western culture as more serious.
It was a funeral that suited one of the most famous people on the planet but for the first half of her life, Mother Teresa lived in obscurity. Asking the doctors, “What’s going on?” he told them his head didn’t hurt anymore and that he felt fine. Yet over three decades of volunteer work with the order, she became a close confidante of the nun and later a spokeswoman for the order.
Missionaries of Charity has consistently declined to respond on the issue.
The Church opened the way for Mother Teresa’s canonisation previous year after declaring the recovery of Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino from a life-threatening brain infection a miracle. “Could you imagine walking home from work and running into Mother Teresa?”.
Among other critiques, she has been accused of offering stingy or substandard medical care; of proselytizing to her patients; of claiming virtue in suffering rather than trying to alleviate it; cozying up to dictators; and of promoting her efforts to a global media eager for heroes.
One inmate, a man of about 40 called Saregama, had just died.
The picture is “superb”, Sister Tanya said. “We prayed for him”. Instead of selfishly considering one’s own gain, people could follow Mother Teresa’s inspirational example of laying down one’s life for a friend. Inside, a notice still hung on the wall saying: “Time to see Mother Teresa: 9 am to 12 noon/3 pm to 6 pm”.
Callahan said Mother Teresa found joy in everything in life.
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As Pope Francis prepares to declare Mother Teresa a saint of the Roman Catholic Church on September 4, a string of top Indian politicians are heading to the Vatican to witness her canonization, underlining her popularity in her adopted home.
