Mother Teresa, the tiny, stooped nun who cared for the poorest of the poor in the slums of India and beyond, will be declared a saint next year after Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her intercession.
The Vatican on Friday set no date for the canonization, but it is widely believed that it will take place during the first week of September to coincide with the 19th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death and during Francis’ Holy Year of Mercy.
“With her work, she was always the symbol of mercy, not just with words but with her actions,” said the superior general of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, the Rev. Sebastian Vazhakala.
The Vatican said Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa’s intercession during an audience with the head of the Vatican’s saint-making office Thursday, the pope’s 79th birthday.
The miracle in question concerned the inexplicable cure of a Brazilian man suffering from a viral brain infection that resulted in multiple abscesses. By Dec. 9, 2008, he was in a coma and dying, suffering from an accumulation of fluid around the brain.
The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator spearheading Mother Teresa’s canonization case, said in a statement Friday that 30 minutes after the man was due to undergo surgery, he sat up, awake and without pain. The surgery did not take place, and a day later the man was declared to be free of symptoms.
The Vatican later attributed the cure to the fervent prayers to Mother Teresa’s intercession by the man’s wife, who at the time of his scheduled surgery was at her parish church praying alongside her pastor.
“This is fantastic news. We are very happy,” said Sunita Kumar, a spokeswoman for the Missionaries of Charity in the eastern city of Kolkata (earlier called Calcutta), where Mother Teresa lived and worked.
