The announcement came Friday, one day after Pope Francis approved a decree that the nun had performed a second miracle.
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Archbishop of Kolkata Thomas D’Souza said the Vatican has recognised that Mother Teresa cured a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours in 2008.
“Bergoglio had Mother Teresa behind him, nearby, and he heard her intervene often with great strength, without letting herself in any way be intimidated by this assembly of bishops”, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, later recounted.
“From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta”.
Could you make “saint”?
She founded the Missionaries of Charity with about a dozen nuns in the 1950s to help the poor on the streets of Calcutta and the religious order spread throughout the world.
She was beatified by then pope John Paul II in a fast-tracked process in 2003, in a ceremony attended by some 300,000 pilgrims.
Pope Francis has cleared the way for sainthood by approving a decree recognizing a second miracle attributed to her intercession with God – a necessary event for such a move in the church.
Relatives prayed to Mother Teresa and he recovered, leaving his doctors at a loss to explain how.
Although no plans are official, Cardinal Amato has previously suggested September 4, 2016 – which is being observed as a jubilee day for workers and volunteers of mercy – as a possible canonization date, since it is close to September 5, the nun’s feast day and the anniversary of her death.
Her missionary order in Kolkata – formerly known as Calcutta – said it was “thrilled” and grateful to the pope. Beatification, which requires one miracle, is the last step before sainthood.
Her work won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Here’s how she once described herself: “By blood, I am Albanian”.
“We thought her whole life was a miracle”.
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In the years since her death, some critics accused her and the order of having ulterior motives, saying their real aim was to convert people to Christianity.
