Mother Teresa to be made a saint : Pope announced

In International Affairs
March 15, 2016

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a nun who dedicated her life to helping the poor, will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church at a ceremony on Sept. 4, Pope Francis announced.

Last December, he cleared the way for sainthood for the Nobel peace laureate, who died in 1997 at the age of 87 and was known as “saint of the gutters”.
Teresa, who was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia, became an international figure but was also accused of trying to convert people to Christianity.
Francis, who has made concern for the poor a major plank of his papacy, was keen to make Mother Teresa a saint during the Church’s current Holy Year.
She founded the Missionaries of Charity with about a dozen nuns in the 1950s to help the poor on the streets of Calcutta, now known as Kolkata. The religious order spread throughout the world.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven and can intercede with God to perform miracles.
She has been credited in the church with two miracles, both involving the healing of sick people.

About Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997) also known as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian Roman Catholic religious sister and missionary.
She was born in Skopje (modern Macedonia), then part of the Kosovo Vilayet in the Ottoman Empire. After having lived in Macedonia for some eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries.
Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2003, she was beatified as “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta”.
Her official biography was written by an Indian civil servant, Navin Chawla, and published in 1992.