Mother Teresa sainthood hailed

An Indian Catholic nun cleans a portrait of late Mother Teresa on her 103rd birth anniversary, at an orphanage at Agartala on August 26, 2013. AFP FILE PHOTO

CATHOLIC bishops yesterday welcomed the news from the Vatican that the late Mother Teresa was on her way to sainthood, saying her canonization would help teach Filipinos to be more compassionate to the poor.

“This is a great joy for us. She founded [charity] houses here and she exemplifies selfless service, which is an antidote to the corruption and greed in our country and in the world,” said Novaliches Bishop Emeritus Teodoro Bacani.

Malolos Bishop Jose Oliveros said the forthcoming canonization of the late nun was “great news” not only for the Filipinos but for the people all over the world.

“Mother Teresa is a living image of God’s mercy because she dedicated her life in the service of the poor and the abandoned. Let us ask her to intercede that we may also be the bearers of God’s mercy to those who desperately need his mercy,” Oliveros said.

The prelate also noted that Mother Teresa’s canonization would come at a time when the Catholic Church was celebrating the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles noted that Mother Teresa was close to the Filipinos. “She loved the poor and she had a lot to tell us still,” Arguelles said, remembering the occasion he escorted the late nun in one of her visits to the Philippines in 1978.

Mother Teresa is expected to be officially canonized in Rome on Sept. 4 next year. The move comes after Pope Francis recognized a second medical miracle attributed to the late nun, who dedicated her life to the poor, the sick and the dying in the slums of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India.

Cubao Bishop Honesto Ongtioco said the canonization was timely since the world needed more models “who live and work not for themselves but for others to glorify God.”

“Love was best expressed in her whole life as a witness to Christ,” Ongtioco said.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work among the poorest of the poor, Mother Teresa died on Sept. 5, 1997, age 87. At the time, the Missionaries of Charity based in Kolkata had nearly 4,000 nuns and ran roughly 600 orphanages, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and clinics around the world.

The nun was born to Albanian parents in Skopje in what is now known as Macedonia as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910. Nicknamed the “saint of the gutters,” she dedicated her life to the poor, the sick and the dying in the slums of Kolkata, one of India’s biggest cities, founding the Missionaries of Charity order of nuns there. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

She was beatified by then Pope John Paul II in a fast-tracked process in 2003, in a ceremony attended by some 300,000 pilgrims. Beatification is the first step toward sainthood.

The miracle needed for her canonization concerned the inexplicable cure in 2008 of a man in Brazil with multiple brain abscesses who, within a day of being in a coma, was cured, according to a report in Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference.

The Vatican ascertained that his wife’s prayers for Mother Teresa’s intercession were responsible, the report said.

Mother Teresa is expected to be canonized as part of the Pope’s Jubilee Year of Mercy.

“The Holy Father has authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to proclaim the decrees concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of blessed Mother Teresa,” the Vatican said in a statement.

In the Vatican’s jubilee calendar, Sept. 4 is marked as a day dedicated to the late nun’s memory and her canonization is likely to take place then, experts say.