Mother Teresa will be made a Roman Catholic saint in 2016

To become a saint, a pontiff must recognize a second miracle, and Pope Francis announced this week that he has attributed that second miracle to Mother Teresa, Reuters reported.

Yesterday, Pope Francis approved the second miracle needed to kick off the canonization process which would make her an official saint. “The first case of miracle was in Kolkata”, added Sunita Kumar.

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

Mother Teresa is likely to be canonised in September next year to coincide with the 19th anniversary of her death and Pope Francis’s Holy Year of Mercy, AKI quoted Italian Catholic daily Avennire’s report as saying. In 2002, the Vatican officially recognised a miracle she was said to have carried out after her death, namely the 1998 healing of a Bengali tribal woman, Monika Besra, who was suffering from an abdominal tumour.

She died on September 5, 1997, having 87 years. Damian said members of his parish always knew in their hearts that Mother Teresa was a saint.

“To her own prayers of intercession were joined those of her relatives, friends, and the parish priest, all of whom were praying for a miraculous cure through the intercession of Mother Teresa”, the Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center said in a statement. A Vatican medical commission deemed the sudden recovery “inexplicable in the light of present-day medical knowledge”, according to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the chief promoter of the sainthood cause.

Mother Teresa gave the interview to Thom O’Connor in 1985 and, though her words are well known, the footage of the interview has rarely been seen until now.

In 1948, she donned her iconic white sari with blue trim for the first time and walked out of her convent to start her life caring for them.

The traditional Roman Catholic canonization procedure requires at least two so-called medical miracles. “Let us ask her to intercede that we may also be the bearers of God’s mercy to those who desperately need His mercy”, he said in an interview. “At the age of 18, Blessed Teresa came here to study English and begin her life as a nun with the Loreto Sisters of Dublin”. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic congregation of women that served the destitute and engaged in aid work around the world.