By Mwakilishi | Tue, 03/15/2016 12:32PM -0400
Pope Francis on Tuesday formally approved sainthood for Mother Teresa and set September 4 as the date for her canonisation.
The move comes 19 years after the death of the missionary nun who dedicated most of her adult life to working with the poor of Kolkata, India.
There was no immediate word from the Vatican on thelocation of the canonisation ceremony, which is expected to take place in Rome with a thanksgiving ceremony held at a later date in the Indian city where Teresa is buried.
The Albanian nun, 87 when she died in 1997, was revered by many Catholics and won the 1979 Nobel peace prize for her work with the poor.
But she was also a divisive figure with critics branding her a religious imperialist whose fervent opposition to birth control and abortion ran contrary to the interests of the communities she claimed to serve.
Teresa took the first step to sainthood in 2003 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II following a fast-track process involving the recognition of a claim she had posthumously inspired the 1998 healing of a critically-ill Bengali tribal woman.
Last year she was credited by Vatican experts with inspiring the 2008 recovery of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours, thus meeting the Church's standard requirement for sainthood of having been involved in two certifiable miracles.
She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003 following a fast-track process involving the recognition of a claim she had posthumously inspired the 1998 healing of a Bengali tribal women.
Francis met Teresa before he became pope, in 1994, and later joked that she had seemed so formidable he "would have been scared if she had been my mother superior".
Others were much harsher in their judgement with the likes of Germaine Greer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens accusing her of contributing to the misery of the poor with her strident opposition to contraception and abortion.
In her Nobel acceptance speech she described terminations of pregnancies as "direct murder by the mother herself."
Questions have also been raised over the Missionaries of Charity's finances, as well as conditions in the order's hospices.
A series of her letterspublished in 2007 also caused some consternation among admirers, as it became clear that she had suffered crises of faith for most of her life.
India granted her a state funeral after her death and her grave in the order's headquarters has since become a pilgrimage site.
- AFP
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