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Mother Teresa miracle real
02/10/2002 12:53 - (SA)
Calcutta - Nuns at Mother Teresa's order in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta on Tuesday expressed delight that the Vatican had authenticated a miracle, paving the way for her elevation to the sainthood.
"The Mother House received a call from the office of
Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in the Vatican late last night and it made us very, very happy," said Sister Nirmala, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity.
"The recognition of Mother's miracle brought a wave of happiness in the Mother House last night since it has brought her a step closer to sainthood," she added.
"Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity began their day with a
special 45 minute thanksgiving mass to the almighty God today."
The Vatican Congregation on Tuesday recognised the healing of an Indian women's abdominal tumour as a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, who was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, now
Macedonia, in 1910.
Sister Nirmala said she was due to visit the Vatican later this month.
The beatification ceremony, a second step on the road to full
canonisation, is likely to take place at the Vatican in spring next year, raising the prospect that Mother Teresa's journey from death to sainthood will be one of the shortest in modern church history.
Mother Teresa died in September 1997 aged 87 after a lifetime of service to the poor and which earned her global recognition, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.
The alleged miracle - a prerequisite for sainthood - dates
from the first anniversary of Mother Teresa's death, when nuns from her order placed a medal on the stomach of Monika Besra, a
30-year-old Bengali tribal woman with an abdominal tumour they were caring for.
The same medal of the Virgin Mary had been placed on Mother
Teresa's body after she died.
When Besra woke up the next morning the tumour had miraculously disappeared. "My stomach became smaller and smaller," she said in a statement sent to the Vatican as part of a dossier running into thousands of pages.
Within days she was able to return to work in the fields,
according to the report. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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