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> How The Catholic Church Documented Mother Teresa's 2 Miracles

Enlarge this image toggle caption Bikas Das/AP Bikas Das/AP

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."

Enlarge this image toggle caption Rana Chakraborty/AP Rana Chakraborty/AP

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> (CNN) Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected to gather in Rome to witness the canonization of Mother Teresa, the nun who dedicated her life to helping the poor in India.

The canonization mass, held by Pope Francis, will take place Sunday morning in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. A number of bishops from both Albania, where Mother Teresa was born in 1910, and India are due to attend, as well as state leaders.

The crowd is anticipated to surpass the 300,000 that attended Pope John Paul II's beatification of Mother Teresa in Rome in 2003.

"Brothers and sisters, even in our days God inspires new models of sainthood," John Paul told the crowd at the time.

Most of the Catholic Church's saints or blessed people are honored decades, if not centuries, after their deaths. Traditionally, there is a mandatory five-year waiting period before formal evaluation of a candidate for beatification can begin.

Mother Teresa's devotees began pressing the Vatican soon after her death to speed up the nun's sainthood cause, saying her holiness was clear to many around the world. Pope John Paul II granted the special dispensation in 1999, and the procedure began.

The pope waived the waiting period in part, some believe, because of her fame and reputation.

John Paul II further paved the way for her beatification in 2002, when he approved a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa after her death.

"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," Besra told CNN last week.

"My entire village and I am very happy that she is being made a saint."

A Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors was healed after loved ones prayed to Mother Teresa to heal him, according to Avvenire, a newspaper affiliated to the Catholic Church.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Mother Teresa set up her Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Kolkata in 1950 and made her headquarters in the Indian city for nearly half a century.

Her small figure in a white-and-blue sari and sandals became familiar around the world. She died in Kolkata in 1997 at age 87.

Known as the "Saint of the Gutters" for her unending work and compassion for the poor, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said her spirit and the respect she had for the worth and dignity of human beings inspired constructive efforts to do away with hunger and poverty.

The nuns and priests from the Missionaries of Charity continue her work around the world, including some ex-communist countries where she was banned. Her order has offices in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Australia, as well as Hong Kong and Russia.

A group of nuns will travel to the Vatican for the canonization ceremony, and those who remain in Kolkata will mark the day with prayers of thanks. </s> [CNN] – Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who devoted her life to helping India’s poor, has been declared a saint in a canonization Mass held by Pope Francis in the Vatican.

Pope Francis delivered the formula for the canonization of the Albanian-born nun — known as the “saint of the gutters” — before huge crowds of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on Sunday morning.

Applause broke out before he completed the formula of canonization, in which he declared “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint.”

India renamed the city of Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001 to match the Bengali pronunciation. But the church uses the spelling of Calcutta in its references to Mother Teresa. Speaking in Latin, Francis said that “after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint, and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole church.”

Catholics — including hundreds of blue- and white-robed nuns from the Missionaries of Charity sisterhood founded by Mother Teresa — had gathered from around the world to attend the canonization of the church’s newest saint, just 19 years after her death.

A huge portrait of Mother Teresa, whom the church credits with having performed two miraculous cures of the sick, hung from St. Peter’s Basilica during the colorful ceremony. Pope Francis then delivered a homily, in which he praised Mother Teresa — “this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life” — for her charitable work.

“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded,” he said.

“She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity. She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created.” For the newly-sainted Teresa, he said, “mercy was the salt which gave flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering.”

She was an example to volunteers around the world, he said. “May she be your model of holiness.”

In a departure from his scripted remarks, he noted that people “may struggle” to refer to her as “Saint Teresa.” “With great spontaneity, I think we will continue to call her Mother Teresa,” he said.

Prayers were then delivered in a number of languages, including Albanian, Mother Teresa’s native tongue, and Bengali, the language of Kolkata, where a special Mass was celebrated at the Missionaries of Charity Sunday. A prayer was delivered in Chinese for persecuted Christians around the world.

About 1,500 homeless people from across Italy were bused into the Vatican to be given seats of honor at the Mass — and be served a pizza lunch by nuns afterward. Most of the Catholic Church’s saints or blessed people are honored decades, if not centuries, after their deaths. Traditionally, there is a mandatory five-year waiting period before formal evaluation of a candidate for beatification can begin. Mother Teresa’s devotees began pressing the Vatican soon after her death to speed up the nun’s sainthood cause, saying her holiness was clear to many around the world. Pope John Paul II granted the special dispensation in 1999, and the procedure began.

The pope waived the waiting period in part, some believe, because of her fame and reputation.

John Paul II further paved the way for her beatification in 2002, when he approved a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa after her death.

The approved miracle involved Monica Besra, a 30-year-old Kolkata woman who said praying to the nun cured a stomach tumor. The Vatican committee said in October 2002 that it could find no “scientific explanation” for the woman’s recovery. “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,” Besra told CNN last week.

“My entire village and I am very happy that she is being made a saint.”

Pope Francis formally announced that Mother Teresa would be declared a saint in March 2016, when he recognized a second miracle attributed to her.

A Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors was healed after loved ones prayed to Mother Teresa to heal him, according to Avvenire, a newspaper affiliated to the Catholic Church. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Mother Teresa set up her Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Kolkata in 1950 and made her headquarters in the Indian city for nearly half a century.

Her small figure, often in a white-and-blue sari and sandals, became familiar around the world. She died in Kolkata in 1997 at age 87. Earning global recognition for her unending work and compassion for the poor, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said her spirit and the respect she had for the worth and dignity of human beings inspired constructive efforts to do away with hunger and poverty. However, Mother Teresa’s legacy has been criticized. Her critics say her charity isn’t financially accountable and volunteers aren’t properly trained. And some doctors claim Besra was healed by modern medicine, not by prayer.

The nuns and priests from the Missionaries of Charity continue her work around the world, including some ex-communist countries where she was banned. Her order has offices in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Australia, as well as Hong Kong and Russia.

A group of nuns will travel to the Vatican for the canonization ceremony, and those who remain in Kolkata will mark the day with prayers of thanks. </s> Mother Teresa, the celebrated nun whose work with the poor of Kolkata made her an instantly recognisable global figure, will be proclaimed a saint on Sunday.

Pope Francis will preside over a solemn canonisation mass in the presence of 100,000 pilgrims and with a giant haloed portrait of Teresa smiling down from St Peter's Basilica.

The sainthood ceremony, for which the Vatican could easily have issued twice as many tickets, comes one day short of the 19th anniversary of Teresa's death, at 87, in the Indian city where she spent her adult life, first teaching, then tending to the dying poor.

It was in the latter role, at the head of her own still-active order, the Missionaries of Charity, that Teresa became one of the most famous women on the planet.

Born to Kosovar Albanian parents in Skopje -- then part of the Ottoman empire, now the capital of Macedonia -- she won the 1979 Nobel peace prize and was revered around the world as a beacon for the Christian values of self-sacrifice and charity.

She was simultaneously regarded with scorn by secular critics who accused her of being more concerned with evangelism than with improving the lot of the poor.

The debate over the nun's legacy has continued after her death with researchers uncovering financial irregularities in the running of her Order and evidence mounting of patient neglect, insalubrious conditions and questionable conversions of the vulnerable in her missions.

A picture of her as someone who was just as comfortable flying around in a private plane as clutching the hand of a dying patient has also emerged to counterbalance her saintly image.

Sceptics will be absent from the Vatican Sunday however as Francis pays homage to a woman he sees as the embodiment of his vision of a "poor church for the poor".

"Tomorrow we will have the joy of seeing Mother Teresa proclaimed a saint," the Argentinian pontiff said on Saturday. "And how she deserves to be!"

"This witness to mercy in our time will join the vast array of men and women who, by their holiness of life, have made the love of Christ visible."

By historical standards, Teresa has been fast-tracked to sainthood, thanks largely to one of the few people to have achieved canonisation faster, John Paul II.

The Polish cleric was a personal friend of Teresa and as the pope at the time of her death, he was responsible for her being beatified in 2003.

Achieving sainthood requires the Vatican to approve accounts of two miracles occurring as a result of prayers for Teresa's intercession.

The first one, ratified in 2002, was of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, who says she recovered from ovarian cancer a year after Teresa's death -- something local health officials have put down to medical advances rather than the power of prayer.

In the second, approved last year, Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino says his wife's prayers to Teresa led to brain tumours disappearing. Eight years later, Andrino and his wife Fernanda will be in the congregation on Sunday.

Also among the crowd at St Peter's will be Teresa Burley, an Italy-based American teacher of children with learning difficulties who says the soon-to-be Saint Teresa inspired her vocation.

"I'm also named Teresa," she told AFP. "I remember growing up admiring the things she did for children and the poor.

"We need to remember we are here to help each other. We need to be here for those who can't help themselves. It's the same for refugees arriving here: we have to be there to help them transition into their new lives."

Many Indians have made the trip to Rome, among them Kiran Kakumanu, 40, who was blessed by Teresa when he was a baby and grew up to become a priest.

Abraham, an Indian expatriate in London, said Teresa's life had set a unique example to the world.

"She practised Christianity. The majority of Christians only spend their time talking about it." </s> Mother Teresa to be made saint at Vatican ceremony

VATICAN CITY, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a Nobel peace laureate known as the "saint of the gutters" during her lifetime, will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday.

More than 100,000 pilgrims are expected to attend a service led by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican to honour the tiny nun who worked among the world's neediest in the slums of the Indian city now known as Kolkata.

Her legacy fits neatly with Francis's vision of a poor church that strives to serve the poor, and the ceremony will be a highlight of his Holy Year of Mercy which runs until Nov. 8.

Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity (MoC) order have been criticised both during her life and since her death in 1997, but many Catholics revere her as a model of compassion.

Thousands attended a papal audience on Saturday in the Vatican, where a large canvas of the late nun in her blue-hemmed white robes hung from St. Peter's basilica.

"Her testimony makes us reflect and transform...and make a better world," Brazilian priest Carlos Jose Nacimento said.

Critics say she did little to alleviate the pain of the terminally ill and nothing to tackle the root causes of poverty. Atheist writer Christopher Hitchens made a documentary about her called "Hell's Angel".

She was also accused of trying to convert the destitute in predominantly-Hindu India to Christianity, a charge her mission has repeatedly denied.

But Pope John Paul II, who met her often, had no doubt about her eligibility for sainthood, and put her on a fast track to elevation two years after her death instead of the usual five.

The Church defines as saints those believed to have led such holy lives they are now in Heaven and can intercede with God to perform miracles - two of which are needed to confer sainthood.

She is credited with healing an Indian woman from stomach cancer in 1998 and a Brazilian man from a brain infection in 2008.

The canonisation will also be celebrated in Skopje, the capital of modern Macedonia where Mother Teresa was born of Albanian parents in 1910 and became a nun aged 16.

In Kolkata, where the first MoC mission was set up in 1952, there will be prayers, talks and cultural events, but no major ceremony.

Delegations from at least 15 national governments are expected at the Vatican. </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption As the Pope declared Mother Teresa a saint, cheers rang out from the crowd of thousands in St Peter's Square

Mother Teresa, revered for her work with the poor in India, has been proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis in a ceremony at the Vatican.

Francis said St Teresa had defended the unborn, sick and abandoned, and had shamed world leaders for the "crimes of poverty they themselves created".

Tens of thousands of pilgrims attended the canonisation in St Peter's Square.

Two apparent cures of sick people after Mother Teresa's death in 1997 have been attributed to her intercession.

In India, a special Mass was celebrated at the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in Kolkata (Calcutta).

An hour with the Saint of the Slums

What happened to the critics?

How to become a saint

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Pope Francis led the canonisation ceremony

Cardinal Angelo Amato read a brief biography of Mother Teresa's work, then asked the Pope to canonise her in the name of the Church.

Pope Francis responded: "We declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint and we enrol her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church."

The Pope said Mother Teresa had spent her life "bowing down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity".

He added: "She made her voice heard before the powers of the world, so that they might recognise their guilt for the crimes of poverty they themselves created." He then repeated: "The crimes of poverty they themselves created."

Image copyright AP

Shining a light: Analysis by BBC's Caroline Wyatt

Despite the intense heat, the atmosphere among the pilgrims in St Peter's Square was one of joy, and the service a celebration of the life of this extraordinary woman.

Teresa was born an ethnic Albanian, and the Albanian flag was much in evidence, as was the distinctive white habit, trimmed with blue stripes, worn by the nuns of her order, the Missionaries of Charity.

In his homily of St Teresa's work, Pope Francis said she had shone a light in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering. It was clear that her life reflected the kind of Church that this Pope is trying to build: one that shows mercy to all and offers practical help for the poorest and for all those in need.

Although critics have sought to portray St Teresa as a sinner and a hypocrite, her supporters have been just as vocal in her defence, challenging those critics to live their lives the way St Teresa did, before they cast the first stone.

Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters attended the event, along with 13 heads of state or government.

Some 1,500 homeless people across Italy were also brought to Rome in buses to be given seats of honour at the celebration - and then a pizza lunch served by 250 nuns and priests of the Sisters of Charity order.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Tens of thousands attended in St Peter's Square

Image copyright AFP Image caption Nuns at the Mother House in Kolkata watch the ceremony

One pilgrim, Charlotte Samba from Gabon, told Associated Press: "Her heart, she gave it to the world. Mercy, forgiveness, good works. It is the heart of a mother for the poor."

Large TV screens were set up at Mother House in Kolkata for the Vatican ceremony.

Worldwide acclaim

Mother Teresa founded a sisterhood that runs 19 homes, and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

But she was not without her critics, as some people noted a lack of hygiene in the hospitals run by her sisterhood, and said she accepted money from dictators for her charity work.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Who was Mother Teresa?

She died in 1997 - aged 87 - and was beatified in 2003, the first step to sainthood.

In 2002, the Vatican ruled that an Indian woman's stomach tumour had been miraculously cured after prayers to Mother Teresa, despite the doubts of her husband.

Pope Francis cleared the way for sainthood last year when he recognised a second miracle attributed to her.

Her work complements Francis' vision of a Church that serves the underprivileged.

Her canonisation is a centrepiece of his Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A woman who said she experienced Mother Teresa's first "miracle" describes what happened

Born in 1910 to ethnic Albanian parents, Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu grew up in what is now the Macedonian capital, Skopje, but was then part of the Ottoman Empire.

Aged 19, she joined the Irish order of Loreto and in 1929 was sent to India, where she taught at a school in Darjeeling under the name of Therese.

In 1946, she moved to Kolkata to help the destitute and, after a decade, set up a hospice and a home for abandoned children.

She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. The sisterhood now has 4,500 nuns worldwide.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Nuns belonging to the Missionaries of Charity order are still active in Kolkata

Image copyright AP Image caption Mother Teresa is buried in Kolkata and people can visit her tomb

She achieved worldwide acclaim for her work in Kolkata's slums, but her critics accused her of pushing a hardline Catholicism, mixing with dictators and accepting funds from them for her charity.

It often takes decades for people to reach sainthood after their death, but beatification was rushed through by Pope John Paul II. </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> 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.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta is to be canonized into sainthood after "proof" of two miracles.