Mother Teresa to be made saint on Sept. 4
Vatican officials have informed Indian church leader that the canonization ceremony will be in Rome.
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Pope Francis announced the date at a March 15 meeting of cardinals to give the final approval to several sainthood causes, including Mother Teresa.
The Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity congregation, dedicating her life for the “poorest of the poor” was based in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, now known as Kolkata.
Indian bishops during their plenary meeting in early March had formally sent an invitation to Pope Francis to visit India. During a discussion on inviting pope, some bishops had suggested that the pope’s visit be linked with the canonization ceremony.
However, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis of Trivandrum, president of the Indian Catholic bishops’ conference told them that Vatican officials had informed him that Mother Teresa's canonization ceremony will be in Rome.
Father Joseph Chinnayan, deputy secretary general of the bishops conference, pointed out that two other canonization ceremonies of Indian Saints Kuriakose Chavara Elias and Alphonsa were conducted in Rome.
Pope Francis cleared the path to Mother Teresa’s sainthood in December when he approved a second miracle attributed to her.
Mother Teresa was born in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia. She came to India in 1929 as a novice with the Loreto nuns. She left the congregation in the late 1940s and started the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
Mother Teresa died of cardiac arrest at the congregation’s motherhouse in Kolkata on Sept. 5, 1997, aged 87. Her canonization process began two years afterward. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003. Her tomb at the motherhouse has become a pilgrimage center.
In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
Source: UCAN
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