Mother Teresa to be canonized in 2016–report

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. Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s elevation to sainthood has been set for September 2016, according to a top Catholic cleric. AFP

VATICAN CITY–Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s elevation to sainthood has been set for September 2016, according to a top Catholic cleric.

Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella was quoted by Italian media Tuesday as telling municipal officials in Rome that Pope Francis would canonize the nun celebrated for her work with the poor of Calcutta as part of the upcoming Jubilee Year declared by the pontiff.

A Vatican spokesman said, however, the canonization had not yet been approved and it was “premature to talk of this date having already been fixed.”

A celebration of the memory of Teresa has been scheduled for September 5, 2016, as part of the Jubilee program of events. Fisichella said she would be canonized the day before, on Sept. 4.

A canonization would take planning, as more than 300,000 pilgrims came to Rome for Teresa’s beatification ceremony in 2003. Beatification is a first step towards sainthood.

Known across the world for her charity work, Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work with the poor, sick, old and lonely in the slums of the Calcutta, one of India’s biggest cities, now known as Kolkata.

But she has been accused by critics of trying to foist Catholicism on the vulnerable, with Australian feminist and academic Germaine Greer calling her a “religious imperialist.”