Vatican recognises Mother Teresa second miracle

Pope Francis has recognized a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, the nun who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her work helping the poor of Kolkata, India, clearing the way for her canonization as a saint next year, the Vatican announced on Friday.

Pope Francis celebrated his 79th birthday on Thursday (Dec. 17) with a gift to the many devotees of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: The pontiff gave final clearance for “the saint of the gutters” to become an official saint. “Mother Teresa died in 1997 and was beatified – the first step towards sainthood – in 2003”.

The miracle needed for her canonisation concerned the inexplicable cure in 2008 of a man in Brazil with multiple brain abscesses who, within a day of being in a coma, was cured, according to a report in Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference. Among them was John XXIII in 2000 and Mother Teresa in 2003.

Mother Teresa knew poverty from childhood on. What she said there was so unsettling to the Harvard establishment that they never published the text of her speech.

She was a fierce defender of the unborn saying, and is known to have said, “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me”. At the time, he was Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The writer Christopher Hitchens also criticised her for her association with dictators such as the Duvaliers in Haiti and Enver Hoxha in Albania. Kolodiejchuk said the man’s wife had been praying for Mother Teresa’s intercession specifically during the half-hour when her husband was supposed to be in surgery. Detractors opposed her stance against birth-control use in Calcutta’s slums, which was nevertheless in keeping with church teaching opposing artificial birth control. “And from that he developed a great esteem for her, as a strong woman, a woman able to give courageous testimony”.

As if to underscore his connection to Mother Teresa, Francis on Friday celebrated Mass at a Caritas charity soup kitchen at Rome’s main train station, where he told a few dozen homeless people and volunteers that theirs is the path to salvation, not that of the wealthy or powerful.

St. John Paul II had made an exception to the usual canonization process in Mother Teresa’s case by allowing her sainthood cause to be opened without waiting the usual five years after a candidate’s death.

Her missionary order in Kolkata – formerly known as Calcutta – said it was “thrilled” and grateful to Pope Francis.