Mother Theresa to be made a saint after Pope Francis' approval

Mother Theresa 1910-1997

Pope Francis has signed off on the miracle needed to make Mother Teresa a saint, giving the Albanian nun who cared for the poor in India one of the Catholic Church's highest honours just two decades after her death. The Vatican said on Friday that Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa's intercession during an audience with the head of the Vatican's saint-making office on Thursday, his 79th birthday. No date was set for the canonisation, but Italian media have speculated that the ceremony will take place in the first week of September - to coincide with the anniversary of her death and during Francis' Holy Year of Mercy.
The miracle responsible for Mother Teresa's canonisation concerned the inexplicable cure of a Brazilian man suffering from a viral brain infection that resulted in multiple abscesses. By December 9, 2008, he was in a coma and dying, suffering from an accumulation of fluid around the brain. The Reverend Brian Kolodiejchuk, the person spearheading Mother Teresa's canonisation case, said in a statement on Friday that about 30 minutes after the man was due to undergo surgery that never took place, he sat up, awake and without pain, and was a day later declared to be symptom-free.
The Vatican later attributed the cure to the prayers to Mother Teresa's intercession by the man's wife, who at the time of his scheduled surgery was at her parish church, praying alongside her pastor.
Mother Teresa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, died on September 5, 1997, aged 87.

Source: Aljazeera