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Mother Teresa's Sainthood Cleared After Vatican Approves Second Miracle

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Dec 19, 2015 02:55 PM EST

Mother Teresa of Kolkata, India, will be the new saint of Roman Catholic Church in 2016 after Pope Francis announced Friday her "second miracle".

Usually, the canonization process for sainthood happens only five years after the candidate is dead, according to The Mystical Humanity of Christ Publishing. Hence, after she died in 1997, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa in 2003, after assessing that an Indian woman's prayers to Mother Teresa had helped her "incurable tumor" to disappear, like a miracle.

On Thursday, the second miracle involved the "inexplicable healing" of a Brazilian man who had multiple brain abscesses when he was in a coma in 2008. When his family informed the nun, the man healed in just a day, according to The Indian Express.

Hence, two miracles were attributed to her name after she was beatified. This is the minimum requirement for sainthood. So the Vatican concluded that she would be canonized, although it did not announce the specific date for it.

It said: "The Holy Father has authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to proclaim the decree concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of blessed Mother Teresa."

Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops' conference, has suggested a tentative date of Sept. 4, 2016, the day just before her feast day, highlighting the current Holy Year of Mercy.

Other figures that were canonized since the start of Pope Francis' papacy in 2013 include Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II, along with Spanish Franciscan friar Junípero Serra and San Salvadorian archbishop óscar Romero.

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