How Did Mother Teresa Became A Saint

Mother Teresa: The Miracles That Made Her a Saint

Mother Teresa devoted the most of her life to serving the ill and needy from her home in Calcutta, where she was born. A large number of her lovers and supporters demanded that the nun be canonized and canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church upon her death on September 5, 1997. In 1999, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk was assigned as a postulator, with the responsibility of advancing the case for her canonization. This was an expedited version of the procedure, which would normally not begin until after a five-year waiting time had elapsed had been completed.

Before Mother Teresa was determined to be responsible for two miracles that occurred after her death, she was unable to be canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

However, the Vatican wants more than a person crying, “I’m healed!” and professing gratitude to Mother Teresa in order to accept that a miraculous recovery has occurred.

The intercession of a future saint with God is deemed to have brought about a cure if it can be demonstrated that the recovery occurred outside of the rules of nature and that there is no scientific explanation for it.

Mother Teresa had a few ‘almost’ miracles

Many of the alleged miracles linked with Mother Teresa did not match the requirements of the Catholic Church. Among the cases that were considered but not deemed miraculous were: a French girl who claimed that touching a medallion from Mother Teresa healed ribs she’d broken in a car accident — but the healing did not occur quickly enough to be considered miraculous; and a woman who claimed that touching a medallion from Mother Teresa healed ribs she’d broken in a car accident. When a Palestinian girl had a dream in which Mother Teresa appeared, she was able to heal from bone cancer — but the church must wait several years to verify that cancer cases do not reappear.

Moreover, even if there is no medical explanation for an improvement in someone’s health, it would not meet the criteria for a miracle because the healing would not have been completely completed.

Monica Besra prays in front of a photograph of Mother Teresa in her hometown of Nakur, Danogram, in this file photo.

Mother Teresa’s first miracle was curing a woman with a lump growing in her abdomen

Monica Besra was admitted to a Missionaries of Charity home in West Bengal, India, in 1998 because she was suffering from a high fever, headaches, vomiting, and a bloated stomach. The previous year, she had began therapy for tuberculous meningitis, which had spread throughout her body. However, the meds she’d been taking — on an as-needed basis, depending on what her family could afford — had failed to prevent a lump from developing in her stomach (though some reports have described Besra as suffering from cancerous tumors, the growth could have been caused by tuberculosis).

  1. She was praying in the Missionaries of Charity chapel on September 5 when she noticed light emerging from a portrait of Mother Teresa.
  2. Later, a medallion that had come into contact with Mother Teresa’s corpse was put on Besra’s abdomen, and a sister prayed for Mother Teresa’s assistance while requesting her for help.
  3. A series of medical checks revealed that the abdominal lump had disappeared, and the doctors she’d met agreed that Besra no longer required surgery.
  4. As a result, Mother Teresa’s miraculous intervention was credited with her recovery.
  5. Notably, some physicians have questioned Besra’s seemingly unexplainable recovery, claiming that she may have been treated by the medication she was receiving at the time.
  6. A miracle was also said to have occurred, but Besra’s husband afterwards maintained that he had been misquoted and that he had not said anything wrong.

Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016, during a mass celebrated in her honor in Vatican City. Marcilio Andrino and his wife, Fernanda Vatican Image courtesy of Getty Images News

Mother Teresa’s second miracle was curing a man who had brain abscesses

In 2008, Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino was on the verge of passing away. His brain had become infected, resulting in abscesses and a buildup of fluid, and his rapidly deteriorating health caused him to go into a coma. Fernanda, his wife, begged Mother Teresa to intervene on their behalf. When Fernanda and her husband were married, a priest presented her her a relic of Mother Teresa, which she treasures “Put the relicon on Marcilio’s head, where he had the abscesses, and he would be healed.

  1. However, before the procedure could begin, Andrino suddenly regained consciousness and inquired, “What am I doing here?”.
  2. The abscesses and fluid that had built up around his head were completely resolved without the need for surgery.
  3. The case was again investigated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and a medical commission, as was done previously.
  4. In 2015, his recovery was hailed as the second miracle performed by Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa was canonized nine years after her death

According to Vatican law, the first miracle ascribed to a candidate for sainthood qualifies him or her for beatification, which is the next step in the process. If a second miracle occurs, the possibility of canonization and admission into sainthood is increased. It was the recognition of her first miracle that led to Mother Teresa’s beatification, which occurred in 2003. Saint Teresa of Calcutta was canonized on September 4, 2016, and is now known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

How Mother Teresa became Saint Teresa

It was announced at the Vatican on Sunday that Mother Teresa had been elevated to sainthood. She will now join the likes of St. Nicholas, Joan of Arc, and hundreds of others who the Church has discovered to be interceding with God in heaven in order to accomplish miracles on Earth. Following a brief narrative of her work as an Albanian nun, which was mostly in Calcutta and for the poor, Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church presided over the event, which was attended by more than 120,000 people in St.

The Vatican confers sainthood to those who, according to the Vatican, have been confirmed to perform miracles after their deaths.

As Pope Francis delivers a liturgy for the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the Vatican on September 4, 2016, this is a broad view of the square.

“She made her voice known before the world’s authorities in order for them to acknowledge their responsibility for the crimes of poverty that they themselves perpetrated.” Following a journey to Darjeeling and employment as a nun in Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, in the 1940s, young Teresa yearned to assist the people living in the slum that her school, which was managed by Irish sisters, overlooked.

  1. She was granted permission to leave the convent in order to follow her own interests.
  2. On September 4, 2016, nuns from the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India, gathered to witness a live broadcast of Mother Teresa’s canonization ceremony, which took place in Rome.
  3. In 1950, she established the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta with a small group of 12 followers as the founding members.
  4. Her efforts culminated in her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ten years later.
  5. A lady who was acknowledged by President Ronald Reagan and persuaded Cuban leader Fidel Castro to allow her to work in his nation, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
  6. Her order now has more than 5,600 hospices in 139 countries.
  7. pic.twitter.com/YNGkhd9Z6m — Pope Francis (@Pontifex) on Twitter.

Sainthood is a time-consuming and misused procedure that many have attempted to refute; others just do not believe the miracles Mother Teresa is alleged to have performed.

The secular superstition of miracles, of Mother Teresa Sadhus, or of Muslim Pirs will continue to be rejected by Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta).

They would also question the quality of the order’s care, as well as its lack of sanitation, as well as her anti-abortion attitude, which she made apparent during her Nobel acceptance speech.

Some people have disliked Teresa’s celebrity, which she gained as an Indian citizen, while others have admired it.

According to the Rev.

Although it is unclear whether this was always her intention.

“When others told her their horror stories, their anguish and suffering from being unwanted and lonely, she understood completely.

This was a surprise that Francis shared with the audience at the ceremony on Sunday afternoon.

“If I ever achieve sainthood, I will very certainly be a saint of ‘darkness.'” Her letter to the congregation said, “I shall be away from Heaven – to shine the light of Christ onto those who are in darkness on earth.”

Mother Teresa’s Miracles: How She Was Declared a Saint

Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s life was a miracle in and of itself, to put it another way. Mother Teresa left her home in Skopje, North Macedonia, when she was eighteen years old to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland, never to return home again. After a period of time, Mother Teresa was transferred to the convent of the Sisters of Loreto in Calcutta. There, I felt compelled to aid the dying and underprivileged on the streets of Calcutta, and so I did. As a result of this summons, she established her own religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, in which she lived and served among those she referred to as “the poorest of the poor.”

Mother Teresa’s Canonization Process: Facing Criticism

Some individuals were critical of Mother Teresa because of her extreme poverty practices. Others were of the opinion that she was reckless in the way she handled gifts to the convent. Following Mother Teresa’s beatification, stories appeared claiming that she was not a saint. Aroup Chatterjee, an Indian doctor, and Christopher Hitchens, a film presenter, are two of Mother Teresa’s most vocal detractors. As part of the process leading up to Mother Teresa’s canonization, both men were requested to provide testimony against her.

Initial contributions to the film were made by Chatterjee, who later withdrew his support on the grounds that Hitchens’ account was too “slanderous and sensationalist.” Chatterjee went on to publish a book titled “Mother Teresa: The Untold Story,” in which he discusses the unsanitary conditions of Mother Teresa’s hospices, as well as Mother Teresa herself.

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After conducting a thorough investigation into the assaults against Mother Teresa, the Vatican found that they did not diminish Mother Teresa’s saintly reputation.

Peter Gumpel, explains: “What many people do not understand is the desperate conditions Mother Teresa was constantly subjected to, and that her special charism was not to found or run hospitals—the Church already has many who do that—but to rescue those who had been given no chance of survival and would otherwise have died on the streets.” As a result, Mother Teresa passed the canonization procedure, which was scrutinized by the Catholic Church.

As part of this procedure, a detailed biography as well as all of the candidate’s writings are submitted, along with testimony from multiple witnesses from the candidate’s life who are both opposed to and supporters of canonization.

Mother Teresa’s first miracle: the healing of Monica Besra

It was the healing of Monica Besrain Bengali, a Bengali, India, woman who was the first miracle that led to Mother Teresa’s beatification that brought her to fame. Monica experienced a tumefaction (swelling produced by an accumulation of fluid in the tissues) in her belly that was around 16 cm in diameter. Despite Monica’s efforts to seek medical attention, she was deemed too frail to be operated on since she had been sick with TB previous to the growth. Monica was attending church one day when she noticed a beam of light emanating from a portrait of Mother Teresa.

In an interview with the New York Times, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator of Mother Teresa’s canonization cause, describes it as follows: “On Sept.

Take care of Monica in some way.” Monica’s tumor had fully vanished by the time she woke up the next morning.

The healing of Monica was recognized as Mother Teresa’s first miracle by the Vatican. The miraculous healing of Monica Besra occurred in 2002, and Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in October of same year.

Mother Teresa’s Second Miracle: the healing of Marcilio Andrino

The cure of Marcilio Andrino in 2008 was the second Miracle that led to Mother Teresa’s canonization, and it was the catalyst for the first. Originally from Brazil, Marcilio suffered from a brain illness that resulted in several abscesses in his brain. In addition, he had acquired hydrocephalus (a buildup of fluid in the cavities of the brain). The relic of Mother Teresa would frequently be placed on Marcilio’s head by his wife, Fernanda. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was also prayed for, and she asked for recovery through a novena, but Marcilio’s condition only worsened.

  1. Despite the fact that Maricilo was on the verge of death, they sent him to the hospital in order to drain fluid from his brain in a last ditch effort to save his life.
  2. As soon as he returned, Marcilio was awake and in no discomfort; in fact, he inquired of the doctor, “What am I doing here?” Approximately 14 hours had passed after Marcilio had been placed in a coma when this occurred at 6:10.
  3. Multiple doctors examined Marcilio’s brain scans, but none were able to come up with an explanation for how he recovered so swiftly.
  4. Mother Teresa was canonized as a saint on September 4, 2016, just a day before the 19th anniversary of her death, after two miracles were confirmed.
  5. The loving compassion of God has continued to be shared by Mother Teresa even after her death, not only via the miraculous healings of Monica Besra and Marcilio Andrino, but also with those who dedicate their prayers to her in hopes of obtaining their own minor miracles.

Prayer to Mother Teresa for a miracle

The healing of Marcilio Andrino in 2008 was the second Miracle that contributed to Mother Teresa’s canonization. Originally from Brazil, Marcilio suffered from a brain ailment that resulted in many abscesses throughout his body. He had also acquired hydrocephalus, which was a medical condition (a buildup of fluid in the cavities of the brain). The relic of Mother Teresa was frequently placed on Marcilio’s head by his wife, Fernando. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was also prayed for, and she asked for recovery through a novena, but Marcilio’s condition only deteriorated.

  • In spite of the fact that Maricilo was on the verge of death, he was sent to the hospital in order to drain fluid from his brain in a last ditch effort to save his life.
  • On his return, Marcilio was awake and in no discomfort, and even inquired as to “what I’m doing here” with the doctor.
  • Marcos had two brain scans, one that day and another four days later, to determine the extent of his injuries.
  • Mother Teresa’s second miracle was officially recognized by the Vatican in December 2015.
  • “For Mother Teresa, kindness was the’salt’ that gave flavour to her work, and it was the ‘light’ that shined in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to weep during their poverty and suffering,” Pope Francis said in his homily for her canonization mass.

The loving compassion of God has continued to be shared by Mother Teresa even after her death, not only via the miraculous healings of Monica Besra and Marcilio Andrino, but also with those who dedicate their prayers to her in hopes of obtaining their own small miracles.

Mother Teresa declared saint by Pope Francis at Vatican

a caption for the media There were applause and cheers from the hundreds of people in St Peter’s Square when the Pope officially made Mother Teresa a saint. Mother Teresa, who is well regarded for her work with the impoverished in India, has been canonized by Pope Francis in a ceremony held at the Vatican on Monday. Catholic Church leader, Pope Francis, praised St Teresa for her defense of the unborn, the ill, and the abandoned, as well as her shameful condemnation of world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves produced.” The canonization ceremony took place at St Peter’s Square in front of tens of thousands of pilgrims.

  1. At the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in Kolkata, a special Mass was held to commemorate her life and legacy (Calcutta).
  2. According to the image description, Pope Francis presided over the canonization event.
  3. “We declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint, and we enlist her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be revered as such by the entire Church,” Pope Francis said.
  4. “She saw in them their God-given dignity.” “She made her voice known before the forces of the world, so that they may acknowledge their responsibility for the crimes of poverty that they too had perpetrated,” he said.

Shining a light: Analysis by BBC’s Caroline Wyatt

A joyful mood pervaded St Peter’s Square, despite the oppressive heat, and the ceremony itself served as a tribute to the amazing lady who had given her life for the sake of others. Teresa was born into an ethnic Albanian family, and the Albanian flag, as well as the characteristic white uniform with blue stripes used by the nuns of Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, were prominently displayed in their home. According to Pope Francis, St Teresa’s effort has shined a light into the darkness of countless people who no longer have tears to cry for their poverty and suffering because of her work.

  1. However, although opponents have attempted to depict St Teresa as a sinner and a hypocrite, her admirers have been just as outspoken in their defense of her, daring those critics to live their lives in the same way that St Teresa did before casting the first stone.
  2. Some 1,500 homeless persons from across Italy were also transported to Rome in buses in order to be granted seats of honor at the ceremony, which was followed by a pizza lunch provided by 250 nuns and priests from the Sisters of Charity order of the Catholic Church.
  3. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered at St Peter’s Square, according to the image description.
  4. The event is being watched by nuns at the Mother House in Kolkata, according to the description.

Mercy, forgiveness, and good deeds are all important. It is the beating heart of a mother who cares for the impoverished.” The Vatican event was shown live on large television screens inside Mother House in Kolkata.

Worldwide acclaim

Mother Teresa started a sisterhood that currently operates 19 houses and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. However, she was not without her detractors, who pointed out a lack of sanitation in the clinics managed by her sisterhood and claimed that she received money from dictators in exchange for her charitable efforts. Who was Mother Teresa, according to the media caption? She died in 1997, at the age of 87, and was beatified in 2003, completing the first step on the path to sainthood.

  1. This was despite the reservations of her husband.
  2. Her work contributes to Pope Francis’ vision of a Church that assists the poor and disadvantaged.
  3. According to the media caption, a lady who claims to have witnessed Mother Teresa’s first “miracle” tells what transpired.
  4. She grew up in what is now the Macedonian capital of Skopje but was then a part of the Ottoman Empire.
  5. In 1946, she relocated to Kolkata to assist the poor, and after a decade, she established a hospice and a shelter for abandoned children in the city.
  6. There are presently 4,500 nuns in the sisterhood all throughout the world.
  7. Nuns from the Missionaries of Charity order are still working in Kolkata, according to the caption on the image.
  8. Mother Teresa is interred in Kolkata, and visitors are welcome to pay their respects at her grave.
  9. She denied these charges.

More on this story

When Mother Teresa was on her road to becoming a saint, she left behind a terrible legacy. Commons image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Since Mother Teresa was canonized by the Vatican in 2016, the reaction has been polarized and divisive among the general public. In order for Mother Teresa to be declared a saint, the Vatican had to accept two miracles that she performed after her death, which were witnessed by the world. Only six years after her death in 1997, Pope John Paul II recognized the first miracle, which occurred in 2003.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI declared that Mother Teresa accomplished miracles when she successfully treated a lady and then a man who were suffering from cancer.

However, the Vatican’s decision to proceed with its preparations despite the controversy surrounding Mother Teresa’s miracles was not deterred.

However, the decision continues to be contentious, and the disagreement regarding her miracles is only a minor portion of the overall debate.

Her image as a selfless humanitarian was mostly intact when she was alive, and she deserves to be remembered as such. However, in recent years, her reputation has begun to tarnish. In fact, when you take a deeper look at her life narrative, it’s not difficult to understand why.

Inside Mother Teresa’s “Selfless” Intentions

Photographs courtesy of STR/AFP/Getty Images During a visit to Calcutta in 1986, Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II waved to well-wishers. She was determined to convert as many people as possible to Catholicism, even if it meant putting their lives in danger or neglecting the destitute and sick. It is rare to find someone who builds a church only for the love of God — especially in regions like India where essential facilities such as hospitals are unavailable. Religious organizations that build churches in these places do it not only out of a sense of altruism, but also in order to expand the number of people who believe in their religion.

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Also in the framework of the Catholic Church, generosity can be considered as a self-serving act on the part of the giver.

Others, on the other hand, who have actually visited and worked at her medical clinics, are completely opposed to her.

The Horrific Conditions At Mother Teresa’s Medical Centers And Missions

DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/Getty Images DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY In 2003, a group of Indian schoolgirls carried a banner commemorating Mother Teresa’s beatification as part of a march commemorating the occasion. Despite the fact that Mother Teresa’s medical institutions were intended to treat people, her patients were frequently subjected to situations that made them sicker rather than healthier. In the same program, an Indian journalist made the comparison between Mother Teresa’s headquarters for the “Missionaries of Charity” and photos of the Bergen-Belsen death camp in Nazi Germany, which he had seen in the past.

Medical technology and apparatus that would have safely automated procedures and saved lives were rejected acceptance and implementation by the folks who ran the organization.” It wasn’t simply volunteers who expressed dissatisfaction with Mother Teresa’s care of her patients.

It was reported in the British medical journal The Lancet in 1994 that medicine was short in her clinics and that patients were not receiving anything close to the level of care that they need to address their symptoms of chronic pain.

However, in her opinion, this was not always a negative development.

Her significant cardiac issues were diagnosed and treated at a contemporary American hospital when she first began suffering them.

The Questionable Company That Mother Teresa Kept Throughout Her Life

AFP/Getty Images/RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images Mother Teresa was photographed in 1991 for this picture. While Mother Teresa was being criticized for ignoring the needs of the sick, she was also being criticized for spending time with various affluent — and corrupt — international leaders. In this group was the former Haitian tyrant Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was later accused with crimes against humanity for the maltreatment of his own people. At one point, 60 Minutes broadcast footage of Mother Teresa complimenting Duvalier’s wife Michele, which was broadcast on the network.

  1. The experience served as an excellent lesson for me.” That wasn’t the only friendship that caused others to take notice.
  2. A prominent role in the 1980s savings and loan disaster, which was caused by housing market and loan speculation and cost American taxpayers $124 billion, Keating was one of the main architects of the financial collapse.
  3. Her response was, “I have absolutely no knowledge of Mr.
  4. The fact that a co-prosecutor of Keating wrote to Mother Teresa after his conviction — and pointed out that one of the individuals Keating stole from was a poor carpenter — does not indicate that she reacted to him.

The Enduring Mystery Of Where Mother Teresa’s Money Went

Photograph by SAM PANTHAKY/AFP/Getty Images Twelve years after Mother Teresa’s death, nuns gather around a photograph of her. This was before Mother Teresa was canonized and became a saint. Thousands of well-intentioned Catholics donated money to Mother Teresa’s charity organizations throughout the years, but many of them would never see their kind contributions put to use in Mother Teresa’s philanthropic efforts. Even though Keating’s $1.25 million contribution would appear to be sufficient to bring all of those under her care out of poverty, one volunteer noted that “even when bread was available at the soup kitchens, none was purchased until it was given to them.” During one incident, Mother Teresa refused to leave the checkout line unless someone else paid the $800 she had racked up at a food shop to feed the people at her charity.

According to a study published in the German magazine Stern in 1991, just seven percent of the millions of cash she received were spent for charitable endeavors.

The rest of the world will never know.

“It’s up to God,” Joshi added. “He is our banker,” says the narrator. On the other hand, one has to question where all of that money was going in the first place – and what happened to it after Mother Teresa died.

Mother Teresa’s Views On Reproductive Rights

Photograph by DOUG COLLIER/AFP/Getty Images The Blessed Mother prays during the celebration of Mass at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Although it should come as no surprise that a Catholic nun would be opposed to abortion, Mother Teresa’s discussion of her opinion when winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 stirred some eyebrows. With regard to Bosnian women who had been raped by Serbs and who were seeking abortion services for their unintended pregnancies, Mother Teresa stated that abortion was the “greatest destabilizer of modern society” because “it constitutes an act of aggression and murder committed by the mother herself.” Aside from that, she campaigned against birth control, stating that “natural family planning” would alleviate the problems of those who were not ready to have children.

  • Likewise, what Mother Teresa did encourage in the field of family planning — such as abstinence — was counterproductive and did not benefit anyone.
  • However, despite the fact that she received some criticism for her political ideas, Mother Teresa was largely successful in avoiding controversy while she was alive.
  • With the benefit of hindsight, these concerns are difficult to overlook now.
  • She may have been admired for her compassion for the poor and the sick, but her procedures insured that they remained in agony until their deaths were imminent.
  • Take a look at the weird conflict between the Vatican and cats, which is also hilarious.

Want to become a saint like Mother Teresa? This is how

Mother Teresa, the Catholic missionary who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the underprivileged, has been officially declared a saint by Pope Francis. Despite her death in 1997, it took another 19 years before she was officially recognized as a saint. A lengthy and difficult procedure, on the other hand, wasn’t always the case. Peter and Paul, like other early saints, were simply recognized as such by the Church on the basis of their reputations and (in many cases) their martyrdoms, rather than any other criteria.

Unfortunately, characters from stories were occasionally elevated to the status of saints.

One of Mother Teresa’s polio survivors pays tribute to the saint (James Bennett) In 1234, Pope Gregory IX formalized the process of canonization, demanding that a candidate’s life and miracles be studied first before he or she could be declared a saint.

The recognition of a person’s sanctity throughout their time on Earth, as well as their oneness with God after death, is the basis of sainthood. Saints are revered and prayed to because they are considered to be living examples of the religion.

What you need to become a saint

The following are the two most important requirements:

  1. 1. The applicant must be a martyr or must have lived a life exemplifying “heroic virtue”—characteristics like as faith, hope, love, bravery, and so on
  2. 2. It is necessary to ascribe miracles to the candidate after their death
  3. For example, someone getting healed after praying to the candidate, having a vision of them, or using prayer beads that belonged to them are all examples of such miracles.

The first prerequisite is rather straightforward. It is decided by conducting an investigation into the candidate’s life. Fortunately, there is an abundance of material in the instance of Mother Teresa, including public statements and personal correspondence. It is also someone’s responsibility at the Vatican to play the role of the devil’s advocate and make the argument against the elevation of a person to sainthood (this is how the term came about). While the miracles portion of canonization is frequently foreign and baffling to non-Catholics, Joel Hodge, a theologian at the Australian Catholic University, believes that it is the miracles aspect that is often strange and confounding to Catholics.

  • According to Dr.
  • “We can do our hardest to create the most accurate assessments of that person’s life, but even then, we will never be able to totally understand their heart and mind.
  • “There’s a sense in which everything is ultimately up to God, and that’s what the miracle is attempting to acknowledge as part of the process,” says the author.
  • Hodge claims that this is a meticulous procedure; for example, he claims that medical specialists are called to certify that there are no natural causes for the healing that has taken place in the patient.
  • Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that Pope Francis has recently canonized four saints who did not perform miracles.

Why it takes so long

Actually, Mother Teresa’s canonization has occurred in a rather short period of time. It can take hundreds of years, in certain cases. Until the twentieth century, it was necessary for a person to have been deceased for at least 50 years before they could be considered for canonization. Pope John Paul II accelerated the process by reducing the time frame to five years. Even more impressively, in Mother Teresa’s case, the requirement to wait was completely removed. Nonetheless, some two decades after her death, she is just now beginning to be revered as a saint.

Hodge, the timing of canonizations is a delicate balancing act.

Mother Teresa

Frequently Asked Questions

What awards did Mother Teresa win?

Sister Mother Teresa, also known as St. Teresa of Calcutta, was born on August 27, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire and died on September 5, 1997 in Calcutta, India. She was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholiccongregation of women dedicated to helping the poor, particularly those in need in India. She was canonized on September 4, 2016, and her feast day is September 5. Many honors were bestowed to her throughout her lifetime, including the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 1979.

  • She spent 17 years as a teacher at the order’s school in Calcutta (Kolkata).
  • She was inspired to devote herself to caring for the sick and impoverished.
  • In response to her appeal, the municipal authorities provided her with a pilgrim hostel near the hallowed shrine of Kali, where she established her order in 1948.
  • It was decided to establish dispensaries and outdoor schools.
  • Pope Pius XII granted canonical authorization to her order in 1950, and it was elevated to the status of a pontifical congregation in 1965.
  • Founded in 1952 as “Place for the Pure of Heart,” Nirmal Hriday (“Place for the Pure of Heart”) is a hospice where terminally ill patients can die with dignity.
  • The Missionaries of Charity, under the direction of Mother Teresa, established a leper colony in Asansol, India, which they named Shanti Nagar (“Town of Peace”).
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This was one of the country’s highest civilian honors at the time.

In 1968, she was summoned to Rome, where she was tasked with establishing a house that would be staffed mostly by Indian nuns.

As a result of her humanitarian efforts, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Later her life, Mother Teresa spoke out against divorce, contraception, and abortion among other things.

Her resignation as head of the order was accepted, but she was later reinstated by a vote that was virtually unanimous — the lone voice of opposition being her own.

Her order, which includes hundreds of centers in more than 90 countries and around 4,000 nuns, as well as hundreds of thousands of lay workers, existed at the time of Mother Teresa’s death.

She was beatified on October 19, 2003, becoming the first woman to be elevated to the ranks of the blessed in the church’s history in the shortest amount of time.

Mother Teresa’s writings (which were gathered and released in 2007) suggest that she did not sense God’s presence in her soul during the final 50 years of her life, despite the fact that she demonstrated joy and a genuine dedication to God in her daily work.

Her spiritual darkness persisted, and she started to feel that she was a participant in Christ’s Passion, particularly the time when Christ begs, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” While dealing with this difficult situation, Mother Teresa was able to integrate the experience of absence into her everyday religious life and remain steadfast in her faith and her work for Christ.

Mother Teresa is a well-known humanitarian. Mother Teresa’s inauguration as Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1975. Eddie Adams is credited as AP/REX/Shutterstock.com. Those in charge of editing the Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen has made the most current revisions and updates to this page.

Mother Teresa: A Saint Who Conquered Darkness

The concern that Mother Teresa had when she formed the Missionaries of Charity was that she or one of her sisters or brothers would do or say something that would generate controversy or detract from the Order’s mission was one of her most deeply held beliefs. That she was reluctant to talk publicly about the internal locutions she had been experiencing for seven or eight months after getting a call inside a call on the train to Darjeeling is understandable, at least in part, given her reluctance to speak publicly about her interior locutions.

  • Immediately, it produced distress and consternation among her supporters, while it engendered an exuberant delight among her adversaries that bordered on schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in another’s misery, in the German language.
  • Because of her unwavering commitment to the task she’d done for God, the majority of the world was utterly unaware of her spiritual darkness until it was too late.
  • What was the significance of Teresa’s prolonged sojourn in the spiritual wilderness?
  • Had she completely lost her trust in God?
  • Even Teresa’s closest companions in the Missionaries of Charity were perplexed by what she was going through.

Approximately four years before her death, she warned her sisters that “the Devil” is constantly on the lookout in order to “make you believe that it is impossible that Jesus truly loves you, is truly devoted to you.” All of us are at risk as a result of this.” None of them could have anticipated that the comment was a reference to their own lives.

As a result of the letters, noted critic Christopher Hitchens, Teresa was exposed to be a “confused old lady” who had “ceased to believe,” and whose devotion to others was nothing more than “part of an effort to silence the suffering within.” He also stated that the Catholic Church’s portrayal of Teresa’s sojourn in the desert as a “dark night of the soul” was a bizarre marketing ploy that attempted to pass off sorrow as faith in the face of overwhelming odds.

  • Anguish in the Heart of a Soul There’s no getting around the fact that Mother Teresa’s stint in the woods has been unnerving for many people.
  • It’s also extremely likely accurate, considering the nature of Teresa’s work among the lowest of the poor, that she suffered from psychological depression or burnout at various points during her career.
  • However, to assume that the darkness was caused by despair, much alone a lack of faith, would be to ignore the spiritual importance of the experience.
  • Teresa’s prayer, on the other hand, was directed outward, toward the God whose absence she was acutely aware of at that time.
  • Furthermore, a period of darkness does not always imply a lack of faith.
  • Many Christian saints have spoken of their own personal experiences of darkness in their spiritual interactions with God, but it was the sixteenth-century St.
  • As could be expected, Mother Teresa was familiar with his works, and she once noted that while John’s words inspired her to “hunger for God,” they also represented what she saw to be “the horrible experience of being ‘unwanted’ by Him,” according to her.
  • John of the Cross, thenoche oscuraor, or “black night of the soul,” is a sensation of being abandoned by God that is accompanied by hopelessness.
  • Having the conviction that “God has rejected it and with abhorrence hurled it into darkness” is the most painful experience for the soul.

Although it feels terrible, the experience of being rejected by God is essentially a purging of the senses and spirit that prepares the way for a “inflow of God into the heart.” When it comes to a black night of the soul, there is no fixed time limit, although most do not continue for as long as Mother Teresa’s did.

  1. Mother Teresa states in one of her letters, “In my soul, I feel precisely that horrible sorrow of loss—of God not desiring me, of God not being God, of God not truly being.” 8 However, the rare terrifying notion that God may be a fabrication was not her major source of suffering.
  2. Thérèse de Lisieux, the Little Flower, who, at the end of her brief life, suffered from a similar sense of abandonment.
  3. Mother Teresa endured excruciating pain when God refused to reveal himself to her.
  4. Only a few paragraphs, emblematic of the entire book, express some of the loneliness into which her feeling of God’s absence had driven her to.
  5. What a tangle of contradictions exists within my soul.— The agony within is unbearable.
  6. God’s space in my soul is vacant—I am devoid of the presence of God.
  7. This is the one You have tossed away because it was undesired and hated.

I call, I cling, I want—and there is nobody to answer—there is no one on whom I can cling; no, there is no one.

The night is unbearably dark—and I am completely alone.

Teresa’s reference to “the task” in the last statement, of course, refers to the ministry to which she was summoned on that fortunate train journey to Darjeeling in the first place.

When she lost her sense of God’s presence, it coincided with the giving of the long-awaited authorization to create the order that would become known as the Missionaries of Charity.

However, it was just at that moment that she heard the door slam shut.

In her long years of darkness, the door would only open once, and it would be the last time.

When Archbishop Périer passed away in October 1958, a requiem Mass was held at the Calcutta cathedral in his memory.

Périer, as she put it in her writing, “I asked for a sign from God that the Society was doing something right.

My heart is overflowing with love today.” God, on the other hand, “felt it was better for me to be in the tunnel—so He has vanished again,” in just a short period of time.

Yes, to God’s honor.

She came to the conclusion that it was an integral element of her vocation as a Missionary of Charity.

In her early years as a missionary nun, she spent her Sundays visiting the slums in and around the Loreto convent, providing aid to the less fortunate.

More to the point, she consciously accepted their plight as her own.

When she cared for the impoverished and the sick, she was ministering to Christ in his terrible disguise, the Christ who was thirsty, as she stated over and over again.

She thought back to the oath she’d taken in 1942, vowing never to refuse God whatever he asked of her, and she understood that being true to the pledge meant accepting God’s withdrawal from her life.

Yes implies ‘I surrender,’ completely and completely, without considering the consequences.” In other words, it meant accepting whatever God had given you and giving back whatever God had taken away from you.

Upon receiving that insight into the nature of her darkness, she recognized it as an inevitable aspect of the call within a calling, and she would even go so far as to say that she actually enjoyed the darkness because it represented “a part, albeit a very small part of Jesus’ darknesspain on earth.” The search for the missing and the locating of the found Teresa’s later years were marked by bad health and physical agony, which she had to deal with on a daily basis.

  1. A few months before her death, she lay in a hospital bed, suffering from heart failure and pneumonia.
  2. She attempted to communicate with her caregivers by writing on scraps of paper, but she was unable to do so due to her weakened state.
  3. In her hospital room, a Mass was celebrated, and she was able to take a small amount of the consecrated wine to drink afterward.
  4. However, given her decades of living without a feeling of Christ’s presence, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that she also meant that she desired an end to the darkness caused by God’s removal from her life.
  5. If it was God’s desire that she should suffer, then so be it.

Teresa wrote something in 1962, during the second decade of her experience of abandonment, that foreshadowed her eventual view of her vocation to endure the Passion of Christ: “I have been called to suffer the Passion of Christ.” “If I ever achieve sainthood, I will very certainly be a saint of ‘darkness.'” “I will be absent from heaven on a consistent basis in order to shine the light of Christ on those who are in darkness on earth.” This is a remarkable statement to say because it implies that Mother Teresa was prepared to give up the joy of paradise for the sake of those of us who, like her, wake up in the middle of the night wondering where God has vanished from our lives.

It’s hard to argue with the notion that the little nun who served Christ in his horrific disguise for more than fifty years deserved a little downtime.

Teresa, on the other hand, was of a different opinion. Her lifelong devotion to serving God and his people was, in her eyes, merely an apprenticeship for the actual labor that would await her when she died, and she knew it.

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