VATICAN CITY: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a nun who dedicated her life to helping the poor, will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church at a ceremony on Sept 4, Pope Francis announced on Tuesday.
Last December, he cleared the way for sainthood for the Nobel peace laureate, who died in 1997 at the age of 87 and was known as "saint of the gutters".
Teresa, who was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia, became an international figure but was also accused of trying to convert people to Christianity.
Francis, who has made concern for the poor a major plank of his papacy, was keen to make Mother Teresa a saint during the Church’s current Holy Year.
The Vatican said the ceremony would take place at the Vatican, dashing hopes of Indians that the pope would go to Kolkata, as Calcutta is now called, to perform the ritual.
"I am waiting to get there because it has been absolutely jubilant news and I can’t thank God enough that it is happening in my lifetime," said Sunita Kumar, spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns Mother Teresa founded.
She began the order in the 1950s to help the poor on the streets of Kolkata.
The religious order spread throughout the world.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.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.