On September 4, 2016, Mother Teresa will officially become a canonized saint. She was a nun who created the Missionaries of Charity, a foundation in which she and other nuns cared for the poorest of the poor.
Pope Francis announced in December that she would become a saint after a second miracle was attributed to her. A Brazilian man had several brain tumors, his loved ones prayed to her, and he was confirmed to be healed. This miracle happened after her death on September 5, 1997, Kolkata, India.
Mother Teresa was beatified on October 19, 2003, by Pope John Paul II. She said she was called to care for the poor by Jesus, but after founding the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, she felt that God was absent from her life, and she felt “empty” and “lonely,” yet she still continued to care for people and live out what God had called her to do.
“When I feel I am in a God-desert, I know I should get up and walk, like Mother Teresa. She did what Christ asks us to do— clothe the naked, give food and water, be close to the dying and bury them,” theology teacher Teresa Davis said.
When Mother Teresa was 18 years old, she joined an Irish convent. A couple of months later she went to India to teach at St. Mary’s School for girls. Nearly 20 years later, she was on a train in India where she received the call from Jesus to set up the Missionaries of Charity.
“Her greatest miracle was galvanizing a movement of people willing to live out the sacrificial love of Christ among the poor,” theology teacher Jeff Hutchinson-Smyth said.
To read more about Mother Teresa’s life and her road to sainthood, click here to read the March 15 article by the Catholic News Agency announcing her canonization date.
The McNicholas Milestone 