Pope Francis Approves Mother Teresa Miracle

The Vatican said Pope Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa’s intercession during an audience on Thursday – his 79th birthday.

“With the recognition of this second miracle the Church will soon acknowledge Blessed Teresa as one amongst the communion of saints”, he said.

The miracle that now will allow this selfless, attractive woman to be recognised as the saint she was, was the inexplicable healing of a Brazilian man who was suffering from a multiple brain tumours, according to Catholic media reports.

The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator spearheading Mother Teresa’s canonization case, said in a statement Friday (Dec. 18) that the man fully recovered following his wife’s prayers and he has since returned to work as a mechanical engineer.

Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, which is now the capital of Macedonia but at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire.

Nicknamed the “Saint of the Gutters”, she dedicated her life to the poor, the sick and the dying in the slums of Kolkata, one of India’s biggest cities, founding the Missionaries of Charity order of nuns.

For all the reverence with which her name and memory are treated, Mother Teresa was not without her critics.

Though the order’s “service to the poorest of poor” has generated much appreciation worldwide, it’s not without controversies.

Mother Teresa was well-respected for her courageous and forthright views against abortion.

Mother Teresa also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

After Mother Teresa, Sister Nirmala took over the mantle.

He said: “I still recall, it was in the early 70s, and my memory is she was a small woman in a large cathedral. We are very excited and happy about it”, Missionaries of Charity spokesperson Sunita Kumar told PTI. The family said they prayed to Blessed Teresa and, when the man was taken in for an operation, the surgeon found him in the operating room, awake and alert.

Almost 20 years later, during a train ride in India, she felt a calling from Jesus to care for the poor, her Vatican biography said.

No official date for her sainthood ceremony has been announced, but it’s expected to be September 4, which celebrates the Jubilee of workers and the 19th anniversary of her death in 1997.

“This is from Mother Teresa”, I replied.

She was beatified in 2003, the first step toward becoming a saint. She has been unofficially seen as saintlike by many Catholics, though some have criticized her for allegedly mismanaging her clinic and having the ulterior motive of converting people to Catholicism.