Vatican to honour Mother Teresa with sainthood today, Kolkata awaits the golden moment

Mother was beatified as "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta" on Oct 19 in 2003 and a second required miracle was credited to her intercession by Pope Francis, in Dec 2015, paving the way for her to be recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

In Vatican City's St. Peter's Square, Mother will be canonised by Pope Francis at around 1030 am local time in Italy (2 pm in India). Many Kolkatans are among the large number of people from around the world who congregated at the Vatican to watch the ceremony.

Vatican City's St. Peter's Square ahead of Mother's canonisation

In Kolkata, at the Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity (MoC) order headquarters, nuns wait patiently for the special moment when she was declared a saint.

"She encouraged us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus," said Sister Prema in Kolkata's MoC building on A J C Bose Road. A large number of people have gathered before the Mother House in Kolkata where people from across the world visit to pay homage to the late nun round the year.

Mother Teresa

Mother dedicated her entire life to serving the poorest of the poor as well as the destitute and forsaken in the slums of Kolkata while Missionaries of Charity (MoC), the order of self-effacing nuns she founded, expanded worldwide.

However, Mother also courted controversy in her lifetime with her way of functioning attacked by her critics besides her anti-abortion stance.

English journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the extended essay The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995) had attacked her writing "Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty."

A sister prays at the tomb of Mother Teresa in Kolkata's Mother House, the MoC headquarters

In 1994 he also wrote for the documentary Hell's Angel by Channel 4 probing what he called her "campaigns against contraception and foeticide"  and her ties with "wealthy religious and political leaders."

But in life Mother had more followers and admirers worldwide to survive the criticism as she was always held as the role model by many across the world- from beauty pageant contestants to the faithful and social workers.

And perhaps visits to her centres like Kolkata's Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), the home for the dying set up more than six decades ago by Mother Teresa, bears testimony of her work.

At Nirmal Hriday, the volunteers or the sisters of the order work tirelessly to tend to the dying and poor and do not squirm at the inmates’ festering wounds.

Sisters of MoC continue to work following the way of Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa came to Kolkata in 1929 after she heard a call from God to serve the poorest of the poor. She set up schools for street children and medical clinics for slum dwellers. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity.

When she died Sept. 5, 1997, the order had nearly 4,000 nuns and operated about 600 orphanages, shelters for the homeless and clinics. Today, there are more than 4,500 nuns in over 139 countries.

Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

She was also conferred with India’s highest civilian award ‘Bharat Ratna’ in 1980.

She will be formally declared a saint at the Canonisation Ceremony in Rome's Vatican City on Sunday amid the presence of hundreds and thousands of devotees.

Mother Teresa established the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with the mission of caring for, “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

The branches of Missionaries of Charity have spread in several countries which continue their service to humanity by reaching out to the needy.

Born as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Albania, Mother Teresa believed “What the poor need most is to feel needed, to feel loved. There are remedies and treatments for all kinds of illnesses, but when some one is undesirable, if there are no serving hands and loving hearts, then there is no hope for a true cure”.

According to a biography written by Joan Graff Clucas, in her early years Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal, and by age 12 had become convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life.

Mother Teresa, one of the most recognizable faces of the 20th century, was put on the fast track to sainthood after her death.

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.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, saints are 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.

Teresa has been credited with two miracles, both involving healing of sick people.

The latest happened in 2008, when a Brazilian, Marcilio Andrino, unexpectedly recovered from a severe brain infection.

According to reports, he and his wife Fernanda will attend the canonization.

The other miracle happened to Monica Besra, a poor tribal from a village around 400 km from Kolkata.

She was cured of a large stomach tumor in 1998 after she was touched by a dazzling ray of light from Mother Teresa's photo.

(Images by Rajorshi Biswas from Vatican and Avishek Mitra and Sujoy Dhar from Kolkata)