Sainthood for Mother Teresa next year

The pontiff marked his 79th birthday on Thursday by approving a decree that the nun had performed a second miracle 11 years after her death, the Vatican confirmed in a statement.

The study of this miracle began in June of this year, and the approval by the Pope will end a process that already was beatified in 2003, during the pontificate of late Pope John Paul II, after curing the tumor of an Indian woman through divine intervention.

Mother Teresa, one of the world’s saintliest nuns, will be canonized by the Catholic Church, the Vatican announced Friday.

Mother Teresa’s second miracle involved the inexplicable healing of a Brazilian man who was suffering from a viral brain infection that resulted in multiple abscesses with hydrocephalus, according to Church officials.

The miracle was said to have happened after the man’s wife, along with relatives, friends and her parish priest, addressed prayers to Teresa. At this point it is unclear if the ceremony will take place in Rome or Kolkata.

Mother Teresa was born in 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family in Skopje, in what is now the Republic of Macedonia, and died in Calcutta in 1997. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work with Calcutta’s poor.

There she took her Final Profession of Vows and became Mother Teresa. Her grave in the order’s headquarters in Kolkata has since become a pilgrimage site. During a visit to Albania in 2004, Pope Francis told his interpreter he was impressed by her fortitude but also in some ways feared it. Mother Teresa was the saint of mercy and compassion which she lived in every moment of her life.

Sister Christie, a spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity Mother Teresa founded in 1950, said they are very happy with the news. The Vatican on Friday recognised it as a miracle which entitled Mother Teresa to sainthood. She established Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of all.

Pope Francis has cleared the second miracle of Mother Teresa, paving the path for her canonisation.

She’ll be canonised late next year, but it won’t be without controversy.

The Vatican statement added that 30 minutes after the patient arrived in the operating room, the doctor found the patient awake and without pain.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, shown with an Indian child, worked to help sick and homeless victims in the cyclone-ravaged Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Questions have also been raised over the Missionaries of Charity’s finances, as well as conditions in the order’s hospices where there has been resistance to introducing modern hygiene methods. She asked for a glass of water – and I got it for her. She made the sign of the cross before drinking it – which a lot of people do before they eat a meal.