Mother Teresa To Be Made Saint In September, Pope Francis Says

Pope Francis approved Mother Teresa’s canonization after a Vatican panel recognized a second miracle attributed to the nun Tuesday. The pontiff had approved the miracle last December.

A senior clerics' committee gave a nod to the nun’s miracle following which Francis signed a decree approving the canonization of the nun, according to reports. The pope set the date for Mother Teresa’s canonization for Sept. 4, 2016, as widely expected. The move comes 19 years after the nun's death.

Mother Teresa’s miracle reportedly involved a mysterious healing of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain abscesses within a day of him being in a coma in 2008. The Vatican confirmed that his wife’s prayers for Mother Teresa’s intervention cured him.

The nun was beatified — the first step to sainthood — in 2003 by Pope John Paul II after the Vatican said an Indian woman’s tumor was cured after she prayed to the nun. Beatification requires one miracle by the Catholic Church, while for sainthood, proofs of at least two miracles are needed.

The Albanian nun is known for her charity work helping the poor, sick and the dying in the slums of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, for which she was nicknamed the “Saint of the Gutters.” She established the Missionaries of Charity in the city.

Mother Teresa was born as Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1910 and was given Indian citizenship in 1951. The 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner passed away on Sept. 5, 1997, at the age of 87.