According to a Dec. 18 report by Zenit news service, in a private audience with Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis gave the go-ahead for the Congregation to issue a decree “regarding a miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Teresa, known as Mother Teresa around the world.”
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on Aug. 26, 1910, Mother Teresa founded the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity and the Missionaries of Charity.
“The order, which started in Calcutta and spread to more than 130 countries,” Zenit reported, “ran hospices for those suffering from HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis. Known for her charitable works with the poor and sick, the soon to be canonized saint died on Sept. 5, 1997.”
Soon after her death, the Church initiated her beatification process. In 2002, St. John Paul II beatified her after the required first miracle – the healing of an Indian woman suffering from an abdominal tumor – was confirmed. On Dec. 17, Pope Francis confirmed the second miracle – the 2008 cure of a Brazilian man afflicted with brain abscesses.
In a separate Zenit article, CEO of Canada’s Salt + Light Catholic network and columnist Father Thomas Rosica reflected on Mother Teresa’s life.
“I commentated her funeral for several national television networks in Canada, which marked my first time ever doing commentary on television!” he writes. “The pomp, precision and somber majesty of Princess Diana’s London farewell one week earlier were hardly visible in the chaotic scenes of Mother Teresa’s simple wooden casket riding on a gun carriage through the mobbed and chaotic streets of Calcutta for her State funeral.
“Mother Teresa’s life was not a sound byte, but rather a metaphor for selfless devotion and holiness. Her most famous work began in 1950 with the opening of the first Nirmal Hriday (Tender Heart) home for the dying and destitute in Calcutta. Mother’s words remain inscribed on the walls of that home: ‘Nowadays the most horrible disease is not leprosy or tuberculosis. It is the feeling to be undesirable, rejected, abandoned by all.’”
