Pope Francis has approved the second miracle of Mother Teresa of Kolkata, clearing the way for the late missionary to become a saint.
Teresa was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian
parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now
Macedonia.
The announcement was expected after Francis in
December approved a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa's intercession -
the final hurdle to make her a saint. One miracle is needed for beatification -
described by the Catholic Church as recognition of a person's entrance into
heaven - while sainthood requires two.
To this date, the church has credited Mother Teresa
with 2 miracles involving healing sick people.
Mother Teresa passed away in 1997. She is revered by many Catholics but has also been
attacked as a "religious imperialist" who attempted to foist her
beliefs on an impoverished community in which they had no indigenous roots. The
order was founded in 1950 and has run over 600 houses of charity worldwide that
have tirelessly provided care for what she called the "poorest of the poor"
"To be with the poorest of poor, not just the
poor, her mission was always to the poorest of poor, literally pulling people
out of the gutters", Podhajsky.
After spending 45-years serving the poor, the sick,
the orphaned, and the dying on the streets of Kolkata, she died at the age of
87 in her favorite city in 1997.
The Vatican recognized Mother Teresa's first miracle in 2002, a healing
of a Bengali tribal woman with an abdominal tumour.
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.
World known Mother Teresa will officially be
recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church in September, after the decision
of the Public Ordinary Consistory for the Canonization of Blessed(s), presided
over by Pope Francis.
“I realized that I had the call to take care of the sick and the dying, the hungry, the naked, the homeless – to be God’s Love in action to the poorest of the poor. That was the beginning of the Missionaries of Charity.” Mother Teresa of Calcutta. God I pray you use me as an object of peace among the less privileged.
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