Mother Teresa angel of Mercy nears sainthood

Mother Teresa, set to become a saint after the Vatican announced Friday recognition of her second miracle, became a global symbol of compassion for her care of the sick and destitute.

A Nobel peace prize winner and known as the "Angel of Mercy" or the "Saint of the Gutters" for her tireless work in India's Kolkata slums, the nun was mourned around the world when she died in 1997.

Mother Teresa, often pictured smiling while holding a child and dressed in her white and blue habit, is expected to be elevated to sainthood next September.

But for all the reverence with which her name and memory are treated, Mother Teresa was not without her critics.

Renowned British writer Christopher Hitchens accused her of being a political opportunist who struck friendships with dictators and corrupt financiers in exchange for donations to her order.

In a 1995 book "The Missionary Position" and a 1994 documentary called "Hell's Angel", Hitchens also accused her of contributing to the misery of the poor with her strident opposition to contraception and abortion.

She has also been accused of trying to foist Catholicism on the vulnerable, with Australian feminist and academic Germaine Greer calling her a "religious imperialist".
The beloved nun was born in 1910 to Albanian parents in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia.

At the age of 18, she joined the Irish order, the Sisters of Loreto, beginning life as a teaching nun at one of its sister houses in Kolkata.

Arriving in India as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1929, two years later she took her first religious vows as a nun and adopted the name under which she would achieve worldwide recognition.

She began her missionary work with the poor of Kolkata in 1948 and the teeming eastern metropolis, then known as Calcutta, remained her base until her death in September 1997.

She started her own order called the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 and opened her first home for the destitute and dying two years later.

- 'Wonderful miracle' -

Mother Teresa was beatified by then pope John Paul II in a fast-tracked process in 2003, in a ceremony attended by some 300,000 pilgrims. Beatification is a first step towards sainthood.
During the beatification process, the Vatican called on Hitchens to play the ancient role of "devil's advocate" and present arguments against her being blessed.

In 2002, the Vatican officially recognised a miracle she was said to have carried out after her death, namely the 1998 healing of a Bengali tribal woman who was suffering from an abdominal tumour.

The second miracle, attributed to the nun and recognised by Pope Francis this week, was the curing of a Brazilian man suffering numerous brain tumours in 2008.

Archbishop of Kolkata Thomas D'Souza said the dying man, an engineer with two children, suddenly woke up without pain after his family prayed to Mother Teresa for her intervention.

"It's a wonderful miracle for him. And all because they were praying to the blessed Mother Teresa," he told the NDTV network.

A series of her letters published in 2007 caused some consternation among her admirers as it became clear that she had suffered crises of faith for most of her life and even doubted God's existence.
Questions have also been raised over the Missionaries of Charity's finances, as well as conditions in the order's hospices where there has been resistance to introducing modern hygiene methods.

She was granted Indian citizenship in 1951 and received a state funeral after her death.

Her grave in her order's headquarters in Kolkata has since become a pilgrimage site.
Source: AFP