Mother Teresa to become a saint
Pope Francis will declare Mother Teresa a saint today in front of half a million people at the Vatican.
The famous missionary will be canonised after the Catholic Church recognised the second of two miracles.
A critically ill Bengali tribe woman and a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours both credited prayers to the deceased nun with saving their lives.
Mother Teresa devoted her life to helping the poor and sick of the Indian city of Calcutta – now Kolkata.
She formed a close bond with Princess Diana and died aged 87 in September 1997, a month after the royal was killed in a crash.
Today’s celebrations also include music, with a performance by pop star Rita Ora.
The square at the Vatican i s ex pected to draw hundreds of thousands of admirers of the iconic missionary.
Cynics say Albanian-born Mother Teresa imposed her faith on the sick and dying.
Meanwhi le, the Pope urged people to resist “the temptation to indifference” to suffering in a speech on the eve of the ceremony.
Greeting thousands of lay volunteers from around the world in St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis yesterday said that ignoring those suffering hunger, s ick nes s or exploitation is a “modern sin, a sin of today”.
Among the crowd were firefighters and volunteers who rescued survivors from the August 24 earthquake in central Italy.