This week, Pope Francis approved sainthood for Mother Teresa. In the New York Times:
She will be made a saint on Sept. 4, 13 years after her beatification and 19 years after she died at age 87.
The pope cleared the way for sainthood in December by approving a second miracle attributed to her, which involved the healing of a Brazilian man who had suffered a viral brain infection that left him in a coma.
Four others will also be made saints:
…Stanislaus of Jesus and Mary, born Jan Papczynski, of Poland; Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad, the first Swedish saint in more than 600 years; José Gabriel del Rosario, from Argentina, known as the “gaucho priest”; and José Luis Sánchez del Río of Mexico.
Pope John Paul II had approved a first miracle, beatifying Mother Teresa in 2003. From the BBC:
He judged that the curing of Bengali tribal woman Monica Besra from an abdominal tumour was the result of her supernatural intervention.
A Vatican commission found that her recovery had been a miracle after the Missionaries of Charity said that the woman had been cured by a photo of the nun being placed on her stomach. The finding was criticised as bogus by rationalist groups in Bengal.
And 13 years isn’t as long as it might seem, points out the BBC report:
It often takes decades for people to reach sainthood after their death, but beatification was rushed through by Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis was known to be keen to complete the process during the Church’s Holy Year of Mercy which runs to November 2016.
Photo: By Manfredo Ferrari – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35010569