Pope Francis says he’ll make the canonisation on September 4, on the eve of the anniversary of her death, which occurred on September 5, 1997.
The move paves the way for the nun who cared for the poorest of the poor to become the centrepiece of his year-long focus on the Catholic Church’s merciful side.
Pope Francis announced that Mother Teresa would be declared a saint after recognising a second miracle attributed to her: the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors after loved ones prayed to her, the Italian Catholic bishops’ association’s official newspaper Avvenire reported. That miracle occurred after her death.
The nun was beatified in October 2003 by now deceased Pope John Paul II. He approved a first posthumous miracle.
A 30-year-old woman in Kolkata said she was cured of a stomach tumor after praying to Mother Teresa. A Vatican committee said it could find no scientific explanation for her healing and declared it a miracle.
Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Albania and baptized Gonxha Agnes, the Vatican said in her biography.
At age 18, she joined an Irish convent, where she received the name Sister Mary Teresa. Months later, she left for India, landing in Kolkata, the city then known as Calcutta, in January 1929. She taught at St. Mary’s School for girls.
There, she took her Final Profession of Vows and became Mother Teresa. Nearly 20 years later, during a train ride in India, she felt a calling from Jesus to care for the poor.
She established Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of all.
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 the poor. She washed the wounded, cared for the sick and dying, and some of her former students joined her over time.
She spread her work throughout India and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
