How The Catholic Church Documented Mother Teresa's 2 Miracles

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Hundreds of Catholics have been declared saints in recent decades, but few with the acclaim accorded Mother Teresa, set to be canonized by Pope Francis on Sunday, largely in recognition of her service to the poor in India.

"When I was coming of age, she was the living saint," says the Most Rev. Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "If you were saying, 'Who is someone today that would really embody the Christian life?' you would turn to Mother Teresa of Calcutta."

Born Agnes Bojaxhiu to an Albanian family in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, Mother Teresa became world-famous for her devotion to the destitute and dying. The religious congregation she established in 1950, the Missionaries of Charity, now counts more than 4,500 religious sisters around the world. In 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her lifetime of service.

Humanitarian work alone, however, is not sufficient for canonization in the Catholic Church. Normally, a candidate must be associated with at least two miracles. The idea is that a person worthy of sainthood must demonstrably be in heaven, actually interceding with God on behalf of those in need of healing.

In Mother Teresa's case, a woman in India whose stomach tumor disappeared and a man in Brazil with brain abscesses who awoke from a coma both credited their dramatic recovery to prayers offered to the nun after her death in 1997.

"A saint is someone who has lived a life of great virtue, whom we look to and admire," says Bishop Barron, a frequent commentator on Catholicism and spirituality. "But if that's all we emphasize, we flatten out sanctity. The saint is also someone who's now in heaven, living in this fullness of life with God. And the miracle, to put it bluntly, is the proof of it."

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No other Christian denomination posits this notion of an individual in heaven mediating between God and humanity.

"It's not a little supernatural, it's completely supernatural," says the Rev. James Martin, S.J., whose book, My Life with the Saints, recounts his own spiritual journey. "But that's the difficulty a lot of people have with religion. The invitation is to say, 'There's something more than the rational mind can believe, and are you OK with that?' "

Roman Catholic authorities embrace the idea of miracles from heaven with such confidence that they invite skeptics to challenge them. Before candidates qualify for sainthood, the miracles attributed to them must be proven. If someone is suddenly healed after praying to a would-be saint, the Vatican has doctors verify there's no medical reason for it.

A group advocating sainthood for Marguerite d'Youville, a nun who lived in 18th century Canada, for example, sought an alternative explanation for the sudden recovery of a woman with incurable leukemia who had prayed to the nun 200 years after the nun's death. The assignment went to Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a hematologist at Queen's University in Ontario.

Duffin agreed to do the investigation, but only after warning the group that she was not herself a believer.

"I revealed my atheism to them," Duffin says. "I told them my husband was a Jew, and I wasn't sure if they'd still want me. And they were delighted!"

The group reasoned that if Duffin, as an atheist, found there was no scientific reason the woman should have recovered, who could doubt it was a miracle? In fact, after her investigation of the woman's recovery, Duffin agreed that the woman's healing was — for lack of a better word — miraculous.

Intrigued by the experience, Duffin investigated hundreds of other miracle stories chronicled in the Vatican archives in Rome. She came away convinced that "miracles" do indeed happen.

"To admit that as a nonbeliever, you don't have to claim that it was a supernatural entity that did it," Duffin says. "You have to admit some humility and accept that there are things that science cannot explain."

A few miracle stories in recent years have involved nonmedical situations, such as when a small pot of rice prepared in a church kitchen in Spain in 1949 proved sufficient to feed nearly 200 hungry people, after the cook prayed to a local saint. More than 95 percent of the cases cited in support of a canonization, however, involve healing from disease.

Hard-core rationalists would not be likely to see such cases as evidence of a "miracle," even while acknowledging they have no alternative explanation. Devout Catholics, on the other hand, readily attribute such occurrences to God, no matter how mysterious they may be.

"In a sense, it's a little arrogant of us to say, 'Before I can believe in God, I need to understand God's ways,' " says Martin. "To me, that's kind of crazy, that we could fit God into our minds."

Canonization procedures have undergone a series of reforms in recent years. Pope Francis has instituted changes to make the promotion of a candidate less subject to organized lobbying efforts. In fact, Vatican authorities routinely interview at least a few people who doubt the suitability of someone for sainthood. (Among those contacted during the early stages of Mother Teresa's review was Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a highly critical assessment of Mother Teresa's work, calling her "a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud.")

The miracles requirement has also changed over time. In 1983, John Paul II reduced the number of miracles required for sainthood from three to two, one for the first stage — beatification — and one more for canonization.

Some Catholic leaders have called for the miracles requirement to be dropped altogether, but others argue vigorously against this. Bishop Barron says that without the miracles requirement for sainthood, the Catholic Church would offer only a watered-down Christianity.

"That's the trouble with a liberal theology," Barron says. "It tends to domesticate God, make everything a little bit too neat and prim and tidy and rational. I kind of like how the miraculous shakes us out of a too-easy rationalism. We'll affirm everything great about modernity and the sciences, but I'm not going to affirm that that's all there is to life."

In one sense, the sainthood of Mother Teresa may speak to present-day Catholics in a way previous canonizations did not. Martin, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, notes that in a posthumously published collection of her private journals and letters, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, the nun so widely revered for her spiritual purity acknowledged that she did not personally feel God's presence.

"In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss," she wrote, "of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not existing."

Martin says Mother Teresa dealt with such pain by telling God, "Even though I don't feel you, I believe in you." That statement of faith, he says, makes her example relevant and meaningful to contemporary Christians who also struggle with doubt.

"Ironically," he says, "this most traditional saint becomes a saint for modern times."</s>The date falls on the eve of the anniversary of her death, which occurred on September 5, 1997.

In December, Pope Francis announced that Mother Teresa would be declared a saint after recognizing a second miracle attributed to her: the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors after loved ones prayed to her, the Italian Catholic bishops' association's official newspaper Avvenire reported. That miracle occurred after her death.

A 30-year-old woman in Kolkata said she was cured of a stomach tumor after praying to Mother Teresa. A Vatican committee said it could find no scientific explanation for her healing and declared it a miracle.

Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Albania and baptized Gonxha Agnes, the Vatican said in her biography. Mother Teresa, head of the Sisters of Charity, works with some of the lepers in Calcutta on December 7, 1971. A 1960 portrait of Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who dedicated her life to the poor, the destitute and the sick of Calcutta, India (later called Kolkata). Mother Teresa in her hospital around the time she was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in 1973. Mother Teresa delivers a speech after receiving her Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1979, in Oslo, Norway. President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, bid farewell to the Mother Teresa at the White House on May 6, 1981. Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa wave to well-wishers in Calcutta on February 3, 1986. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Mother Teresa at the opening of the Mother Teresa Home for Infant Children on June 19, 1995, in Washington. Diana, Princess of Wales, meets with Mother Teresa in New York in June 1997, months before the women died within days of each other. Kosovo Albanian Catholics attend a religious service at the Blessed Mother Teresa Cathedral in Pristina on September 5, 2012, to mark the 15th anniversary of her death. At age 18, she joined an Irish convent, where she received the name Sister Mary Teresa. Months later, she left for India, landing in Kolkata, the city then known as Calcutta, in January 1929. She taught at St. Mary's School for girls. There, she took her Final Profession of Vows and became Mother Teresa. Nearly 20 years later, during a train ride in India, she felt a calling from Jesus to care for the poor, her Vatican biography said. She established Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of all. In 1948, she donned her iconic white sari with blue trim for the first time and walked out of her convent to start her life caring for the poor. She washed the wounded, cared for the sick and dying, and some of her former students joined her over time. She spread her work throughout India. Pope John Paul II waived the requirement of waiting five years after a person's death to pursue the path to sainthood and opened Mother Teresa's Cause of Canonization less than two years after her death.</s>Rita Ora is set to perform in Rome tonight at a concert in advance of this weekend's canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

A week-long series of events will culminate with a Mass on Sunday where Pope Francis will declare the Albanian-born nun a saint.

The 25-year-old singer told US TV presenter Jimmy Fallon that she was performing at the Vatican during an appearance on the Tonight Show.

Mother Teresa was given the Nobel Peace prize in 1979 for her work with the poor in Calcutta.

Tens of thousands of people are expected for the canonisation ceremony Sunday for the tiny, stooped nun who was fast-tracked for sainthood just a year after she died in 1997.

Pope John Paul II, who was Mother Teresa's greatest champion, beatified her before a crowd of 300,000 in St. Peter's Square in 2003.

Francis has made the canonisation the high point of his Jubilee of Mercy, a yearlong emphasis on the church's merciful side. Francis has an obvious interest in highlighting Mother Teresa's mercy-filled service to outcasts on the periphery, given that her life's work exemplifies the priorities of his own pontificate.

Mother Teresa spent 50 years working with the poorest of the poor in Calcutta.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa joined the Loreto order of Roman Catholic nuns in 1928.

She was traveling from Calcutta to Darjeeling in 1946 when she decided to start the Missionaries of Charity order. Since its establishment in 1950, the order has set up hundreds of shelters that care for some of the world's neediest, people she described as 'the poorest of the poor'.

When she died on September 5, 1997, at age 87, hundreds of thousands of local people poured out into the streets to bid farewell.

Gautam Lewis, a polio victim abandoned by his parents as a child and rescued by Mother Teresa, has long believed in the nun's sainthood, though it won't become official until Sunday.

He said: 'She used to consider all of us as her children. She was our angel guardian.'

At 7, Lewis was adopted from an orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity and moved first to New Zealand and later England. Lewis, 39, now runs a flying school for people with disabilities in the United Kingdom.

But the nun remains the most important influence on his life.

'Mother gave me a destiny to have a different life.'

For him Mother Teresa's canonization is 'just a formality. To most of us, most people in Calcutta, Mother is already a saint'.</s>Rome (CNN) Pope Francis has recognized a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, paving her way to sainthood.

On Thursday, he ratified a miracle attributed to her after her death, the Italian Catholic Bishops' association's official newspaper Avvenire reported.

Catholics believe a saint is someone who lived a holy life and who's already in heaven. Saints are considered role models for people still on Earth, and are believed to be capable of interceding with God on someone's behalf when a request for help is made in prayer. In most cases, two miracles are required to canonize a Catholic saint.

In this case, a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors was healed after loved ones prayed to Mother Teresa to heal him, Avvenire reported.

Holy See spokesman Thomas Rosica said in a tweet that Mother Teresa should be canonized, or pronounced a saint, in September.

"We were very delighted to get the news (about Mother Teresa) this morning," said Sunita Kumar, spokeswoman for Missionaries of Charity, the religious order that Mother Teresa founded. "I was very emotional, of course. I have seen so many miracles every now and then, but I couldn't be happier today."

At age 18, sure she wanted to become a missionary, she joined an Irish convent, where she received the name Sister Mary Teresa. Months later, she left for India, landing in the city then known as Calcutta in January 1929, where she taught at St. Mary's School for girls.

There she took her Final Profession of Vows and became Mother Teresa.

Nearly 20 years later, during a train ride in India, she felt a calling from Jesus to care for the poor, her Vatican biography said. She established Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of all.

In 1948, she donned her iconic white sari with blue trim for the first time and walked out of her convent to start her life caring for them.

She washed the wounded, cared for the sick and dying and some of her former students joined her over time. She spread her work throughout India.

The Vatican took note of her charity and encouraged her to open various organizations in other parts of the world until they were on every continent.

In 1979, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, which drew the attention of the media to the demure nun in blue and white.

By the time of her death, 4,000 Mother Teresa's Sisters worked under her at 610 foundations in 123 countries.

Before she died, Mother Teresa met one last time with Pope John Paul II and then returned to Kolkata to spend her final days with people close to her. She died on September 5, 1997, and was given a state funeral by the government of India.

Pope John Paul II waived the requirement of waiting five years after a person's death to pursue the path to sainthood and opened Mother Teresa's Cause of Canonization less than two years after her death.</s>VATICAN CITY, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Pope Francis will make Mother Teresa, the world's most famous nun, a saint on Sunday . Following are key facts about her life.

Mother Teresa was born to ethnic Albanian parents on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia, and named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu. Deeply religious, she became a nun at the age of 16, joining the Loreto abbey in Ireland. Two years later she was given the name Sister Teresa.

In early 1929 she moved to Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, where she became a teacher and, 15 years on, headmistress at a convent school.

In 1946 she received "a call within a call" to found the Missionaries of Charity, officially established as a religious congregation in 1950. Nuns of the order began calling her Mother Teresa. The Indian government granted her citizenship in 1951.

The following year Mother Teresa opened her first home for the dying, and in 1957 her first mobile leprosy clinic. She worked for three decades in India before leaving for the first time in 1960, going to the United States to address the National Council of Catholic Women.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI granted the Decree of Praise to Mother Teresa's religious order, bringing it directly under Vatican jurisdiction. That same year the first Missionaries of Charity house outside India was founded, in Venezuela. Others later opened in Italy, Tanzania, Australia and the United States.

In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for the world's destitute. "I am unworthy," she said.

Despite declining health, including arthritis, failing eyesight and heart problems, she continued to work. Pope John Paul granted her request to open a shelter for vagrants inside the walls of the Vatican. In 1988 she opened her first communities in the former Soviet Union.

In March 1997 Sister Nirmala, a former Hindu who converted to Roman Catholicism, succeeded Mother Teresa as leader of the Missionaries of Charity.

On September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa died of a heart attack at her order's headquarters in Kolkata. An array of world dignitaries attended her funeral.

In October Archbishop Henry D'Souza successfully petitioned the Vatican to waive the usual delay of five years after death before initiating the beatification process.

In late 2002, the Vatican ruled that an Indian woman's stomach tumour had been miraculously cured after prayers to Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul wanted to declare her a saint immediately, bypassing the beatification process, but was dissuaded by cardinals.

In December 2015, Pope Francis opened the way for her canonisation by approving a decree recognising a second miracle attributed to her intercession with God -- the healing of a Brazilian who recovered from a severe brain infection in 2008. (Reporting by Crispian Balmer; editing by John Stonestreet)</s>Mother Teresa is known across the world for indiscriminately helping beggars, prostitutes and street children.

But days before she is declared a saint by Pope Francis, her legacy has been called into question and the charity she set up faces calls to justify the funds it receives.

The priest who lobbied for her to be made a saint has defended her after critics accused her of reveling in the misery of others.

Critics also claim she was intent on converting people in India, which is predominantly Hindu, to Christianity - an allegation her supporters have long denied.

On Sunday, Mother Teresa - known in her lifetime as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta - will be canonised in St Peter's Square, just 19 years after her death.

Her elevation to saintly status has not, however, been universally welcomed.

A former volunteer who has seen the work the humanitarian's charity does has described Mother Teresa as 'a troubled individual'.

Hemley Gonzalez hit out at the 'horrific remnants of her legacy', saying volunteers are not vetted and claiming he saw nuns routinely reuse needles after washing them in tap water.

Gonzalez, who never met Mother Teresa in person, spent two months volunteering at Nirmal Hriday, a home for the dying run by the Missionaries of Charity (MoC), which she set up.

He told CCN there was not a single doctor or medically trained nurse at the centre.

He said: 'It was a scene out of a World War II concentration camp.'

When Gonzalez tried to suggest improvements such as a water heater, he claimed e was rebuffed.

'"We don't do that here. This is the way Jesus wants it", they'd say,' he stated.

And he claimed the centre could only have been set up by a 'troubled individual'.

Missionaries of Charity spokeswoman Sunita Kumar defended the work it does, saying it was set up to offer basic care for the very poorest people.

'She (Mother Teresa) didn't want to start a five-star hospital or anything like that,' Kumar said.

Gonzalez describes the centre as a 'museum of poverty', and said it should be accountable in the same way others, like the Red Cross and Oxfam, are.

'Why is this organization not being held to the same standard?'

'They get a free pass because of religion; they get a free pass because of the influence of the Vatican.'

Her legacy in India is equally controversial.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the umbrella right-wing Hindu organisation that helped create India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), accuses Mother Teresa of revelling in the misery of others.

Jishnu Bose, an RSS spokesman for Kolkata, said: 'As a resident of Kolkata, I feel insulted to see its poverty being glorified by the MoC.

'As a Hindu nationalist I also feel that Christianity is not the only way of salvation.'

The criticism has been rubbished by the MoC priest who campaigned for her sainthood.

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk said: 'Even in popular culture she's identified with goodness, kindness, charity.

'In novels or movies often characters say, "'Oh, who do you think I am? Mother Teresa?'"

And he stated: 'We don't have to prove that saints were perfect, because no one is perfect.'

Kolodiejchuk said her detractors missed the point of her mission, arguing that she had created a place to comfort people in their final days rather than establish hospitals.

And India's BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among her supporters.

He said: 'All her life she worked to serve poorer sections of Indian society.

'When such a person is conferred with sainthood, it is natural for Indians to feel proud.'

Mother Teresa, a Nobel peace prize winner, was acclaimed for her work amongst the world's poorest of the poor in the slums of the Indian city now called Kolkata.

Hundreds of thousands of faithful are expected to attend the canonisation service for the tiny nun, which will be led by Pope Francis in front of St. Peter's basilica.

One of the big hurdles that had to be overcome before the famous nun - who died in 1997 at the age of 87 - was for Pope Francis to accept that she had performed two miracles.

Brazilian Marcilio Andrino said she helped God cure him of a viral brain infection, which doctors believed would kill him.

His wife Fernanda had prayed for Mother Teresa's intercession specifically while he was in a coma awaiting surgery in December 2008.

In a half-hour gap before being operated on, Andrino appeared to make a full recovery.

Fernanda said: 'Marcilio was fine. He was sitting up.

'He was talking in intensive care (at the hospital) and I realized that he was cured, that Mother Teresa had interceded on our behalf and cured Marcilio.'

And she continued: 'Every time I look at Marcilio and our children, I feel very grateful. I am very grateful to God and Mother Teresa.'

Mother Teresa moved to Calcutta, as it was known then, in 1929 Mother Teresa was born to ethnic Albanian parents on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia, and named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu. Deeply religious, she became a nun at the age of 16, joining the Loreto abbey in Ireland. Two years later she was given the name Sister Teresa. In early 1929 she moved to Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, where she became a teacher and, 15 years on, headmistress at a convent school. In 1946 she received "a call within a call" to found the Missionaries of Charity, officially established as a religious congregation in 1950. Nuns of the order began calling her Mother Teresa. The Indian government granted her citizenship in 1951. The following year Mother Teresa opened her first home for the dying, and in 1957 her first mobile leprosy clinic. She worked for three decades in India before leaving for the first time in 1960, going to the United States to address the National Council of Catholic Women. In 1965, Pope Paul VI granted the Decree of Praise to Mother Teresa's religious order, bringing it directly under Vatican jurisdiction. That same year the first Missionaries of Charity house outside India was founded, in Venezuela. Others later opened in Italy, Tanzania, Australia and the United States. In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for the world's destitute. "I am unworthy," she said. Despite declining health, including arthritis, failing eyesight and heart problems, she continued to work. Pope John Paul granted her request to open a shelter for vagrants inside the walls of the Vatican. In 1988 she opened her first communities in the former Soviet Union. In March 1997 Sister Nirmala, a former Hindu who converted to Roman Catholicism, succeeded Mother Teresa as leader of the Missionaries of Charity. On September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa died of a heart attack at her order's headquarters in Kolkata. An array of world dignitaries attended her funeral. In October Archbishop Henry D'Souza successfully petitioned the Vatican to waive the usual delay of five years after death before initiating the beatification process. In late 2002, the Vatican ruled that an Indian woman's stomach tumour had been miraculously cured after prayers to Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul wanted to declare her a saint immediately, bypassing the beatification process, but was dissuaded by cardinals. In December 2015, Pope Francis opened the way for her canonisation by approving a decree recognising a second miracle attributed to her intercession with God - the healing of a Brazilian who recovered from a severe brain infection in 2008.</s>(CNN) When Pope Francis canonizes the late Mother Teresa at the Vatican on September 4th, she will officially be recognized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

For her followers, the title is a mere formality. They believe the world renowned humanitarian displayed saintly qualities throughout a life dedicated to serving the poor.

But saintly is not a word everyone uses for Mother Teresa. Her critics say she was anything but.

Disillusioned former volunteer Hemley Gonzalez didn't meet her in person, but what he calls the "horrific remnants of her legacy" have left him deeply uncomfortable. After visiting the facilities she's responsible for starting, he feels only a "troubled individual" could have set them up.

After the financial crisis of 2008, Gonzalez took a break from his real estate business in Miami and headed to India, where he spent two months volunteering at Nirmal Hriday, a home for the dying run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta's (now Kolkata) crowded Kalighat area.

Gonzalez says he was appalled at the poor level of hygiene and medical care he saw there. He says the organization didn't vet him or the other volunteers. None, including himself, had any medical experience or received any training before working at the hospice.

He claims he saw nuns routinely reuse needles after washing them in tap water, that clothes -- sometimes soiled with urine and feces -- and cooking utensils were hand washed side by side in the same room.

Patients suffering from respiratory diseases had to bathe in freezing water because a single water heater wasn't barely enough for one bath, he says. And he claims there was not a single doctor or medically trained nurse at the hospice.

"It was a scene out of a World War II concentration camp," says Gonzalez.

Gonzalez says attempts to raise a red flag or offer to install a water heater were always met with the same response by the nuns. "We don't do that here. This is the way Jesus wants it, they'd say," Gonzalez tells us.

Chhanda Chakraborti is part of a group of local Kolkata volunteers who has been associated with the Missionaries of Charity for over 25 years. She served at Nirmal Hriday for several years before Gonzalez did.

"All these claims are rubbish. These critics are actually lying," she says. "You go to Kalighat, people come in dying condition. Most of them regain their lives. How can they give life to a dying person while being careless with their health?"

What they do in the homes run by the Missionaries of Charity, says Sunita Kumar, a spokesperson for the group and a close friend ofMother Teresa, is offer basic care to the poorest of the poor.

"She didn't want to start a five-star hospital or anything like that," she says.

Critics say that's not an acceptable excuse.

It's true there's no transparency -- and very little information available -- on the group's bookkeeping. CNN's request to interview the current head of the organization was declined.

That doesn't satisfy the critics. As a registered charity operating in over a 100 countries, they say there needs to be some accountability, as there is with groups such as The Red Cross or Oxfam.

"Why is this organization not being held to the same standard?" asks Gonzalez. "They get a free pass because of religion; they get a free pass because of the influence of the Vatican."

Mother Teresa's dogmatic views on abortions, contraception and divorce may have been welcomed by the socially restrained Vatican, but they have also been criticized in more progressive circles and put her at odds with the feminist movement.

This is something the Missionaries of Charity firmly rejects. "She looked after everybody in the same spirit, whether they were Muslim or Hindu or Sikh," says Kumar, who herself is Hindu and Sikh.

"When I used to go pray with her, she would say 'Sunita, come to the chapel and you sit the way you do for your prayers and I'll sit the way I do and we'll say our prayers,'" she says.

Even her path to sainthood has been controversial.

To become a saint, Pope Francis had to approve two miracles. One of them involved a rural woman, Monica Besra, who claims she was cured of cancer after praying to Mother Teresa.

Monica says she was cured by Mother Teresa's blessings and not by doctor's treatment.

"I took doctors' medicines, threw up and was in a lot of pain. But when I prayed to Mother Teresa from my heart, Mother Teresa blessed me and now I am healthy," she told CNN. "My entire village and I am very happy that she is being made a saint."

"Our organization does not believe in any kind of miracle," Prabir Ghosh, General Secretary of Science and Rationalists' Association of India, told CNN.

According to Ghosh, Monica Besra's husband said as much to him in 2003. Ghosh told CNN that he has him on video saying his wife was cured by medicine, rather than Mother Teresa.

However, Besra has since denied these statements. This week, he told CNN he stands by Mother Teresa's miracle and never made the comments to TIME.

Museum of poverty, or place of service?

As these controversies rage on, life inside Mother Teresa's homes carries on as usual, with the same simplicity and routine that's been in place for decades.

According to Gonzalez, it's a "museum of poverty." To some, it's a place of selfless service.

A group of nuns will travel to the Vatican for the canonization ceremony in September, and those who remain in Kolkata will mark the day with prayers of thanks.

For them and other devout followers around the world, Mother Teresa was and will forever be, a saint, and no amount of controversy can change that.</s>One of the most iconic figures of the 20th century, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, is set to become a Catholic saint on Sunday in an open-air Mass led by Pope Francis.

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who promoted her sainthood cause, said on Thursday in Vatican that hundreds of thousands of faithful are expected to attend the canonisation service to be led by Pope Francis in front of St. Peter’s basilica.

He said that her canonisation is one of the highlights of Francis’ Jubilee of Mercy.

He said, “Affectionately called the “saint of the gutters” during her lifetime, Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be made an official saint of the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday, just 19 years after her death.

“The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven and able to intercede with God to perform miracles.

“She has been credited with two miracles, both involving the healing of sick people.”

Kolodiejchuk said that Mother Teresa was one of the most influential women in the Church’s 2,000-year history, acclaimed for her work amongst the worlds poorest of the poor in the slums of the Indian city now called Kolkata.

He said critics view her differently, arguing she did little to alleviate the pain of the terminally ill and nothing to stamp out the root causes of poverty.

The priest recalled that in 1991, the British medical journal the Lancet visited a home she ran in Kolkata for the dying and said untrained carers failed to recognise when some patients could have been cured.

Kolodiejchuk said her detractors missed the point of her mission, arguing that she had created a place to comfort people in their final days rather than establish hospitals.

“We don’t have to prove that saints were perfect, because no one is perfect,” he said.

He said that several events are planned in the run up to the ceremony, including a prayer vigil on Friday, an audience in St Peter’s Square with Francis on Saturday morning.

Kolodiejchuk said it would be followed in the evening by a veneration of Teresa’s relics in a Roman basilica outside of the Vatican.

He said, “As the canonisation falls on the eve of Teresa’s feast day, which marks the anniversary of her death on September 5, 1997, there are expected to be more celebrations and religious services on Monday and later on in the week.”

He said that on September 7-8, pilgrims would be allowed to visit the room Teresa used on visits to Rome, in the convent of the Church of San Gregorio Magno near the Colosseum, where her Missionaries of Charity have a local branch.

Kolodiejchuk said that the Indian Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj and other dignitaries from Teresa’s adopted nation are scheduled to attend the Mass.

Mother Teresa was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia.

She became a nun at 16 and moved to India in 1929, creating her mission in 1950 and gained worldwide recognition for her work, including a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Private letters published after her death in 1997 also revealed that for the last 50 years of her life she despaired over having lost a personal connection with Jesus, while she continued steadfastly to serve his cause.

In a preface to a book on the soon-to-be saint, published in July, Francis recalled how giving to the needy is a key to Christian teaching.

Pope said that “Mother Teresa made this page of the Gospel the guide for her life and the path to her holiness and it can be for us, as well.”

Mother Teresa still has legions of supporters in India, including BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi observed that all her life she worked to serve poorer sections of Indian society.

He said, “When such a person is conferred with sainthood, it is natural for Indians to feel proud.”

The Roman Catholic Church has more than 10,000 saints, many of whom had to wait centuries before their elevation.

But Mother Teresa, one of the most recognisable faces of the 20th century, was put on the fast track to sainthood after dying of a heart attack on Sept. 5, 1997.

The late Pope John Paul II bent Vatican rules to allow the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be launched two years after her death instead of the usual five, and she was beatified in 2003.</s>Mother Teresa's old order prepare for her canonisation

Mother Teresa's old religious order the Missionaries of Charity was Tuesday stepping up preparations for a host of celebrations to mark her canonisation in Rome on Sunday.

A full programme to mark the conferring of sainthood on the late Albanian Roman Catholic nun and missionary includes a photographic exhibition and a musical comedy on Thursday, a prayer evening Friday and a catechism which Pope Francis will preside over Saturday.

The canonisation will then be held Sunday in St Peter's Square in a ceremony set to draw tens of thousands of faithful to recognise the sainthood of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who died aged 87 in India in 1997.

Her followers have essentially regarded her as a saint ever since her death.

"Her canonisation doesn't change anything, but it's an official acceptance of the Church and it makes her a strong witness for the world. It brings hope," said Sister Martin de Porres, 76 and a veteran of more than 50 years with the Missionaries, which Mother Teresa established in Calcutta in 1947.

"She wasn't an extraordinary person, she was ordinary like us, but she was different in the sense that she was always in continuing communion with God, whatever she was doing."

Born Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu in 1910 to an Albanian family in Skopje -- modern Macedonia but then part of the Ottoman empire -- Mother Teresa took holy orders aged 18 and went to India to teach.

Her Missionaries, who dedicate their lives to helping "the poorest of the poor", now number some 5,000 worldwide.</s>Kolkata remembers Mother Teresa on the eve of sainthood

KOLKATA, India (AP) — As Pope Francis prepares to declare Mother Teresa a saint just two decades after her death, people touched by her life in the eastern Indian city where she lived and worked for close to 50 years are filled with pride.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa joined the Loreto order of Roman Catholic nuns in 1928. She was traveling from the city then called Calcutta to Darjeeling in 1946 when she decided to start the Missionaries of Charity order. Since its establishment in 1950, the order has set up hundreds of shelters that care for some of the world's neediest, people she described as "the poorest of the poor."

Her work, which began in Kolkata's festering slums and spread across the world, won Mother Teresa a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

It also won her immense love in her adopted home. When she died on September 5, 1997, at age 87, hundreds of thousands of local people poured out into the streets to bid farewell.

The tiny, stooped nun had her critics. They said she romanticized poverty, and they questioned the quality of care in her homes and clinics, among other accusations.

But on the eve of her canonization, one of the highest honors that the Vatican can bestow, the prevailing feeling among those in Kolkata who knew her is joy.

Gautam Lewis, a polio victim abandoned by his parents as a child and rescued by Mother Teresa, has long believed in the nun's sainthood, though it won't become official until Sunday.

"She used to consider all of us as her children. She was our angel guardian," said Lewis, who has a pronounced limp and walks with a crutch.

At 7, Lewis was adopted from an orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity and moved first to New Zealand and later England. Lewis, 39, now runs a flying school for people with disabilities in the United Kingdom.

But the nun remains the most important influence on his life.

"Mother gave me a destiny to have a different life."

For him Mother Teresa's canonization is "just a formality. To most of us, most people in Kolkata, Mother is already a saint."

Born to an old and wealthy family, artist Sunita Kumar grew up in a Kolkata far removed from the squalor of the slums where Mother Teresa worked. Yet over three decades of volunteer work with the order, she became a close confidante of the nun and later a spokeswoman for the order. She was one of the witnesses interviewed by the Vatican ahead of Mother Teresa's beatification in 2003.

"Mother was my role model. I traveled along with Mother quite a bit and learned how simply one can live. The amount of work she used to do herself for the poor, the love and care she gave them, was amazing."

In the final years of Mother Teresa's life, Kumar painted several portraits of the diminutive nun.

Kumar said she is "very happy and delighted" that the nun who inspired her will be declared a saint.

SHE WAS "A LIVING GOD TO US"

In 1988, Swapan Pal found shelter in a home where nuns of the Missionaries of Charity cared for people like him who suffered from leprosy and were shunned by their families and communities.

That moment saved his life. He was cured and eventually met his wife at the shelter. Both now work at a rehabilitation center that is part of the home.

"After being diagnosed as a leprosy patient, I became totally depressed and thought my world had come to an end. But the love and care here has given me a new life," the 50-year-old said.

"Mother was a living god to us. We are very, very happy and glad that the Mother would now be known as a saint all over the world."

Seikh Nurul Hasan runs a shop selling souvenirs and memorabilia of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity near the Mother House, the main office of the Roman Catholic order.

"Mother was a really a great person who worked, cared and loved our people, particularly the poor, irrespective of religion or caste."

The 59-year-old Muslim shop owner remembers a time when a minivan carrying several nuns hit some pedestrians outside his shop.

He said that although no one was seriously hurt, some enraged local people were about to attack the van. Hearing the noise, Mother Teresa came out and "as she moved towards the vehicle, the people who were about to attack the van came under sort of a spell, became absolutely quiet and went away."

"Everyone in this locality is happy with sainthood being conferred on the Mother," he said.

Freelance photographer Sunil Kumar Dutt began covering Mother Teresa's work in Kolkata in 1965 and has one of the largest collections of photographs of the nun.

"From the day I first met her, Mother always appeared to me a living saint in action," the 80-year-old said. "My association with Mother Teresa has impacted my life in a very big way. Whenever I think of her I feel a profound peace in the very core of my heart."

Dutt added, "Though I know granting sainthood is a formality, I feel Mother does not require any authentication from anywhere."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta is to be canonized into sainthood after "proof" of two miracles.