Pope To Beatify Mother Theresa In October

Mother Theresa of Calcutta will be beatified at the Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Oct. 19, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Franco announced yesterday.

Pope John Paul II will preside over the celebration, which will start at exactly 8:55 a.m. and end at 11:30 a.m. (3:55 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. Manila time).

Fr. James Reuter, executive secretary of the PSC-MM National Office of Mass Media, said the decision to conduct the ceremony in Rome means there will be no sidetrip to the Philippines for the ailing pontiff.

In a statement released yesterday, Reuter said "the doctors of the Vatican would not allow him to go to India. So it is not likely that he will also come to the Philippines this year."

Reuter explained that normally, the beatification takes place where the person lived and worked. And if Mother Theresa’s beatification will be held in Calcutta, Filipino bishops had previously hoped that the Pope can fly to Manila as well.

"If I get to Calcutta, it would be easy to come to the Philippines," the Pope was quoted as saying to Filipino bishops.

"I guess it is enough that his heart is in the Philippines," Reuter said.

Reuter disclosed that it is unusual for anyone to be beatified only a few years after one’s death. Mother Theresa died at the age of 87 in India on September 5, 1997.

But in her lifetime, Mother Theresa touched the lives of so many people as she dedicated her life to helping the poorest of the poor in India. This devotion won her respect throughout the world and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, Yugoslavia, Mother Theresa joined a convent, later changed her name and founded the Missionaries of Charity, which worked in the deepest slums of Calcutta.