Mother Teresa To Be Canonised As Saint In 2016

Mother Teresa is to be canonised as a saint after Pope Francis has recognised a second ‘miracle’ she performed curing a Brazilian man of multiple brain tumours in 2008.

Mother Teresa, also known as the “Saint of the Gutters”, is to be canonised next year after two of her miracles were recognized by the Vatican. The ceremony  expected to be held on September in 2016 as part of the pope’s Jubilee Year of Mercy.

First miracle

Her first miracle was recognised in 2002 after she cured a cancerous tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra. However, some of Besra’s medical staff and her husband said that it was actually conventional medical treatment that had eradicated the tumor and not the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa’s picture.

Second miracle

The miracle in question concerned the cure of a Brazilian man suffering from a viral brain infection that resulted in multiple abscesses.

According to Father Brian Kolodiejchiuk, an unnamed man was in a coma and about to undergo an emergency operation, when a neurosurgeon “returned to the operating room and found the patient inexplicably awake and without pain.”

The surgery did not take place and a day later the man was declared to be symptom-free. Despite tests showing that prolonged drug treatment had made him sterile, he went on to have two children.

Controversy

Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. The nun, who died in 1997 at the age of 87, became an international icon but has also been criticised for trying to convert people to Christianity.

She has often been described as a citizen of the world and a living saint. Once she described herself as “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.”