‘Sainthood’ to be conferred on Mother Teresa

The Vatican said Friday that Pope Francis approved a decree, attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa, needed to make her a saint.

The Vatican said Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa’s intercession during an audience with the head of the Vatican’s saint-making office on Thursday, his 79th birthday.

He waived the normal five-year waiting period after a person’s death before the canonisation process could begin in her case and in 2002 judged that the curing of an Indian woman suffering from an abdominal tumour was the result of intervention by Mother Teresa.

Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in what is now Skopje in Macedonia, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1949 and worked her entire life caring for the poor and sick in the Indian city of Kolkata.

The second miracle involved a 35-year-old Brazilian man who had not always been married when he was diagnosed with eight brain tumours in 2008, according to Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli.

The traditional canonisation procedure requires at least two miracles.

“The patient’s wife continuously sought the intercession of Blessed Mother Teresa for her husband”.

It was not clear if the ceremony would take place in Rome or if the pope would travel to India to preside over it.

The revered nun, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, was not without her critics, however, with some accusing her of mixing with dictators and peddling a hardline Catholicism.

“That’s why I think that abortion has become the greatest destroyer of peace today because it destroys the life of the child, but also destroys the conscience of the mother also, and for years and years, she knows that she has murdered her own child”, she said.

She died on September 5, 1997, having 87 years.

Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta, where Mother Teresa’s ministry and order, the Missionaries of Charity, are based, described the approval of the miracle as “a real Christmas gift that the Holy Father has given”.

Albania, which still claims her remains, named the airport, a square and a hospital in the capital Tirana after her, has made October 19, the day she was beatified, a national public holiday.

“If prayers made to someone even after his or her death can cause healing then it is recognised as a miracle”.

“We are grateful to God and we are extremely happy”, he said.

Francis has canonized more than two dozen saints during his time as pontiff, including two previous popes in John XXIII and John Paul II.