Mother Teresa to be canonised on Sept 4

PARIS: Mother Teresa will be canonised on September 4, with the Vatican set to confirm details of the sainthood ceremony for the founder of the Missionaries of Charity and four others on March 15, sources said Sunday.

A consistory, or formal meeting of Pope Francis with cardinals and church officials who promote sainthood causes, is expected on Tuesday to finalise the ceremony, the sources in the Vatican said.

The Vatican event — a day before her death anniversary — will be followed by a thanksgiving celebration in Kolkata on October 2. The Pope officially cleared the path to Mother Teresa’s sainthood on December 17 when he recognised the “miraculous healing” of a Brazilian man whose brain abscesses were cured after his wife prayed to the nun.

The beatification of Mother Teresa — another step towards sainthood — took place in October 2003 after the then Pope, John Paul II, recognised the healing of an Indian woman with a stomach tumour. A canonisation usually involves a special mass by the Pope, often held outdoors in St Peter’s Square, although sometimes the ceremony is held in the home country of the person declared a saint.

Sainthood is one of the highest honours granted by the Catholic Church through a long, complex and secretive process in which miracles are analysed theologically and medically, the sources said. Two miracles after the death of the person have to be traced back to him or her. While healings are usually considered, the other miracles the Church believes in range from “incorruptibility” (where the person’s body does not decay in the grave for long) to “levitation” during prayer and “stigmata” (the five wounds of Christ) that bleed during mass.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, today the capital of Macedonia, Mother Teresa came to India in 1929. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, an order dedicated to “serving the poorest of the poor”. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.