MOTHER TERESA SAINTHOOD
Pope Francis has
declared MOTHER TERESA a saint as part
of his Holy Year of Mercy.
BORN
Mother Teresa born in 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, Mother
Teresa taught in India for 17 years before she experienced her 1946 "call
within a call" to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor. Her
order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged, and disabled; and a
leper colony. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian
work. She died in September 1997 and was beatified in October 2003. In December
2015, Pope Francis recognized a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa,
clearing the way for her to be canonized as a saint on September 4, 2016.
Hundreds of Catholics have been declared
saints in recent decades, but few with the acclaim accorded Mother Teresa, set
to be canonized by Pope Francis on Sunday, largely in recognition of her
service to the poor in India.
"When
I was coming of age, she was the living saint," says the Most Rev. Robert Borren the auxiliary bishop of the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "If you were saying, 'Who is someone today
that would really embody the Christian life?' you would turn to Mother Teresa
of Calcutta."
Born Agnes Bojaxhiu to an Albanian family in
the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, Mother Teresa became world-famous
for her devotion to the destitute and dying. The religious congregation she
established in 1950, the Missionaries of Charity, now counts more than 4,500
religious sisters around the world. In 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for her lifetime of service.
Mother Teresa Declare
as Saint POPE
Applause erupted in St. Peter's Square even
before he finished pronouncing the rite of can nation at the start of the Mass.
Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters in
their trademark blue-trimmed saris had front-row seats at the Mass, alongside
1,500 homeless people and 13 heads of state, including Queen Sofia of
Spain.
Pope Francis' predecessor Pope John Paul II
bent Vatican rules to fast-track Mother Teresa to sainthood – a process which
usually does not start until five years after the candidate's death –two years
after she died in 1997.
Since her death, two
alleged miracles have been attributed to Mother Teresa, paving the way for her classification as a saint.
In 2002, the Vatican ruled that an Indian
woman’s stomach tumor had been miraculously cured after she prayed to Mother
Teresa, leading to her beatification – the first stage towards sainthood – in
2003.
Pope Francis attributed a second miracle to
her after a man with a bacterial infection in his brain purportedly recovered
after praying to Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa is about to
become a saint, despite accusations of ‘religious fundamentalism’ and
criticisms of the medical care her order gave to the sick.
