[ALBSA-Info] Mother Teresa/Macedonia

[Agron Alibali]

 Report on Mother Teresa runs to 35,000 pages 
  
CALCUTTA, India (Reuters) - A report on the life of Mother Teresa to launch 
the process of beatification is 35,000 pages long and 76 volumes. 

It will be taken from Calcutta to the Vatican in six sealed cardboard boxes 
and will include details of a miracle Mother Teresa was said to have 
performed on a woman suffering from stomach cancer in West Bengal. 

"We can only hope, given Mother Teresa's fame and sanctity, that the process 
(in Rome) will move as fast as possible," said Calcutta Archbishop Henry 
Sebastian D'Souza, who oversaw the working of a panel looking into the "life, 
virtues and reputation of sanctity" of Mother Teresa. 

The Diocesan Commission was set up in 1999 after Pope John Paul II granted a 
special dispensation to put the Nobel Peace laureate, who died in 1997, on 
the fast track to sainthood. 

Beatification is a step toward sainthood. 

The commission held its closing ceremony at a church in Calcutta, where 
Mother Teresa ran her Missionaries of Charity home for the poor, Wednesday. 

Speaking at the closing ceremony to about 600 people at St. Mary's Church, 
Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor at the home, thanked people of all 
religions for their support. 

"I pray that we will have Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta in the near 
future," she said to the ovation of hundreds of nuns of the Missionaries of 
Charity, dressed in their trademark white cotton saris with blue borders. 

After the report reaches the Vatican, it will be examined by the Roman 
Congregation for Causes of Saints. 

A Positio -- a comprehensive biography and presentation of how Mother Teresa 
lived the Christian life -- will be prepared, and then examined by nine 
theologians. 

The theologians will submit their findings to the Assembly of Cardinals and 
Bishops who, after studying them, take a vote and then inform the pope of the 
result. 

The pope takes the final decision on her beatification, but only after 
ascertaining that at least two-thirds of the theologians and cardinals and 
bishops are in favor of it. 

Mother Teresa won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979 for her work among the 
sick and poor. 

11:13 08-15-01 

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