SacredSpace102fm : 28th August 2016 - Canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta

28 Aug 2016

28th August 2016 - Canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta

With sincere apologies from your blog editor on the delay in posting this weeks programmes blog post.

On this weeks programme John, Anne, Lorraine and Shane discuss the life and history of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her up coming canonisation on September 4th. We have our regular reflection on this weeks Sunday gospel as well as our saints for the week and other bits and pieces.

This weeks full programme podcast is available HERE.

Canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta

On this weeks programme, SS102fm team explore and discuss the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her forth coming canonisation on September 4th.

Pope Francis will declare Blessed Teresa of Kolkata a saint at the Vatican Sept. 4. The date was announced March 15 during an "ordinary public consistory," a meeting of the pope, cardinals and promoters of sainthood causes that formally ends the sainthood process.

Mother Teresa was widely known as a living saint as she ministered to the sick and the dying in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the world. Although some people criticized her for not also challenging the injustices that kept so many people so poor and abandoned, her simple service touched the hearts of millions of people of all faiths.

Born to an ethnic Albanian family in Skopje, in what is now part of Macedonia, she went to India in 1929 as a Sister of Loreto and became an Indian citizen in 1947. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.

Shortly after she died in 1997, St. John Paul II waived the usual five-year waiting period and allowed the opening of the process to declare her sainthood. She was beatified in 2003.

After her beatification, Missionary of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator of her sainthood cause, published a book of her letters, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light." The letters illustrated how, for decades, she experienced what is described as a "dark night of the soul" in Christian spirituality; she felt that God had abandoned her. While the letters shocked some people, others saw them as proof of her steadfast faith in God, which was not based on feelings or signs that he was with her.

The date chosen for her canonization is the eve of the 19th anniversary of her death and the date previously established at the Vatican for the conclusion of the Year of Mercy pilgrimage of people like her who are engaged in works of mercy.

You can listen to the part of the programme about Mother Teresa of Calcutta excerpted from the main podcast of the programme HERE.

In her second appearance on Irish television Mother Teresa of Calcutta talks to Nodlaig McCarthy about her life and work. The first broadcast aired on September 15, 1974