Pope Francis approves sainthood for Mother Teresa

Pope Francis on March 15 approved sainthood for Mother Teresa, the missionary nun who became a global if controversial symbol of compassion for her care of the sick and destitute.

The pontiff set Sept. 4 as the date for her canonisation, elevating her to an official icon for the Catholic faith.
 
The move comes 19 years after the death of the Albanian nun who dedicated most of her adult life to working with the poor of Kolkata, India.
 
There was no immediate word from the Vatican on the location of the canonisation ceremony, which is expected to take place in Rome with a thanksgiving ceremony held at a later date in the Indian city where Teresa is buried.
 
Teresa, who was 87 when she died in 1997, was revered by Catholics and and many others around the world. She won the 1979 Nobel peace prize for her work with the poor.
 
But she was also a controversial and divisive figure with critics branding her a religious imperialist whose fervent opposition to birth control and abortion ran contrary to the interests of the communities she claimed to serve.
 
Despite posthumously published letters revealing that she suffered crises of faith throughout her life, Teresa has been fast-tracked to canonisation in unusually quick time, underlining her status as a modern-day icon of Catholicism.
 
Teresa took the first step to sainthood in 2003 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II following the recognition of a claim she had posthumously inspired the 1998 healing of a critically-ill Bengali tribal woman.
 
Last year she was credited by Vatican experts with inspiring the 2008 recovery of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours, thus meeting the Church's standard requirement for...