Pope Francis formally approved sainthood for Mother Teresa on Tuesday and set September 4 as the date for her canonisation.
The move comes 19 years after the death of the missionary nun who dedicated most of her adult life to working with the poor of Kolkata.
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 Kolkata, where the nun is buried.
The nun, 87 when she died in 1997, was revered by many Catholics and won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor.
Teresa took the first step to sainthood in 2003 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II following a fast-track process involving 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 sainthood of having been involved in two certifiable miracles.
TOWARDS GREATER GLORY
- Born in Skopje (modern Macedonia), then part of the Kosovo Vilayet in the Ottoman Empire, on August 26, 1910
- Moved to Ireland and then to India, after living in Macedonia for about 18 years
- Founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 in Kolkata
- Received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
- Died on September 5, 1997
- Beatified as the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta in 2003
- A second miracle was credited to her by Pope Francis, in December 2015, paving the way for her to be recognised as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church
Source: Nobelprize.org, media reports
