Mother Teresa to be declared a saint, Pope Francis confirms

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a nun who dedicated her life to helping the poor, will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has announced. The pontiff set September 4 as the date for her canonisation, elevating her to an official icon for the Catholic faith. The move comes 19 years after the death of the Albanian nun who dedicated most of her adult life to working with the poor of Kolkata, India. She was also a controversial and divisive figure with critics branding her a religious imperialist whose fervent opposition to birth control and abortion ran contrary to the interests of the communities she claimed to serve.

… goodness without sentimentality, someone with no expectations who is both calm and calming, powerfully practical.

Late Italian film director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini on Mother Teresa’s appeal

Despite posthumously published letters revealing that she suffered crises of faith throughout her life, Teresa has been fast-tracked to canonisation in unusually quick time, underlining her status as a modern-day icon of Catholicism. Teresa took the first step to sainthood in 2003 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II following the recognition of a claim she had posthumously inspired the 1998 healing of a critically-ill Bengali tribal woman. Last year, she was credited by Vatican experts with inspiring the 2008 recovery of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours, thus meeting the Church’s standard requirement for sainthood of having been involved in two certifiable miracles.

Mother Teresa