Canonization of Mother Teresa
Today, Sunday September 4, 2016 is a special day for the Roman Catholic church as it is the Canonization of Mother Teresa. The entire Canonization was televised on EWTN and this painting was raised just before the Mass began. Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun who spent her life to helping India’s poor and has been declared a saint in a canonization Mass held by Pope Francis in the Vatican in Rome. Pope Francis praised Mother Teresa as a model of compassion to Catholics worldwide.
Most saints from the Catholic Church are honored either decades and sometimes centuries after their deaths but Mother Teresa was canonized only 19 years after her death. Usually there is a mandatory five-year waiting period before formal evaluation of a candidate for sainthood begins.
Mother Teresa’s holiness was clear to many people and her followers around the world and Pope John Paul II granted the special dispensation in 1999, and the procedure began, some saying because of her fame and reputation.
John Paul II further paved the way for her beatification in 2002, when he approved a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa after her death. The approved miracle involved Monica Besra, who was a 30 year old Kotkata women who said praying to Mother Teresa cured a tumor in her stomach. After the Vatican committee researched Monica’s healing, they said in October 2002 that it could find no “scientific explanation” for the woman’s recovery. Another miracle happened when a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors was healed after his loved ones prayed to Mother Teresa for healing.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 and set up her Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Calcutta in 1950, making her headquarters in that city for almost half a century. She earned recognition around the world for her unending work and compassion for the poor that she was awarded the Roman Magsaysay Peace Prize in 1962 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She was a small woman with a big heart and very familiar around the world. Mother Teresa died in Calcutta September 5, 1997 at 87 years old, almost 19 years to the day from when she was Canonized by Pope Francis.
This is such a simple but powerful quote from Mother Teresa, she would say she couldn’t understand all the languages in the countries she visited, but could understand smiles everywhere. What a beautiful Mass at the Vatican by Pope Francis on the Canonization of Mother Teresa.
Click on these links to read more about this amazing woman:
http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/motherteresa.htm
India renamed the city of Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001 to match the Bengali pronunciation. But the church uses the spelling of Calcutta in its references to Mother Teresa.
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If anyone deserves to be a saint it is certainly Mother Teresa!
I think many people think the same way Bill. Such a wonderful person.
I remember how holy Mother Theresa was. I never got to meet her.
She sure was special to so many. I would have love to meat her Sandy!
I have always loved her quotes.
She has so many Andria and I too love them. Some of the simple ones have so much meaning in just a few words. Definitely deserves to be a Saint.