Mother Teresa of Kolkata, India will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church next year after Pope Francis recognized a second miracle that can be attributed to her work, the Vatican announced Friday.
The canonization process for sainthood doesn't begin until five years after the person in question has died, reported The Mystical Humanity of Christ Publishing. With that in mind, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, in 2003 after determining that an Indian woman's prayers to the nun caused her incurable tumor to disappear was a miracle.
The second miracle, which was approved Thursday, involved the inexplicable healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain abscesses who was in a coma in 2008. His family reportedly to Mother Teresa, and he recovered within a day, according to The Indian Express.
After attributing two miracles to her name after her beatification - the minimum required to become a saint - the Vatican concluded she would be canonized, though declined to announce the specific date it would take place only saying: "the Holy Father has authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to proclaim the decree concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of blessed Mother Teresa," according to The New York Times.
Despite not giving a date, a report from Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops' conference, suggests that the canonization would occur on Sept. 4, 2016, the day before her feast day and marking a highlight of the current Holy Year of Mercy.
The canonization of Mother Teresa marks yet another figure Pope Francis has canonized since the start of his papcy in 2013. Some of them include Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II, as well as Spanish Franciscan friar Junípero Serra and San Salvadorian archbishop Óscar Romero.
