Mother Teresa to become Saint

THE Vatican has attributed a second apparent medical miracle to famous Albanian nun Mother Teresa, beloved by many of India’s poor, thus setting her on the street to sainthood. 

A ceremony at the Papal enclave in Rome will see the “Saint of the Gutters”, who died in 1997 aged 87, officially canonised and will likely take place on September 4 next year. 

The Catholic hierarchy traditionally likes to attribute two miracles before declaring someone a saint after their death. 

Three days ago, on December 15, a group convened by the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints decided to credit Mother Teresa with healing a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours. 

In 2002 the See of Rome attributed the healing of a Bengali tribal women in 1998 to Mother Teresa after her death, and in 2003 she was beatified by John Paul II, in a ceremony which attracted around 300,000 people. This marked the first step on her journey to sainthood and was widely seen as a fast-tracking of the traditional process. 

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her decades of work with India’s poor but has also faced heavy criticism over the years for her opposition to contraception, which likely exacerbated third-world poverty, the poor quality of her hospitals given the money received, and her position that suffering and poverty were virtues. 

2016 is a special jubilee year for the papacy and the canonisation will likely form a key highlight for Pope Francis and co.