Vatican Radio: State funeral for Catholic nun, Pakistan's Mother Teresa

Pakistani soldiers carrying the coffin of Catholic nun Sr. Ruth Pfau during her state funeral, in Karachi, Pakistan, 19 August 2017. - EPA

(Vatican Radio) Pakistan on Saturday laid to rest its famous angel of mercy, German-born Catholic nun Ruth Pfau, credited with eradicating leprosy or Hansen’s disease from Pakistan. The Daughter of the Heart of Mary Sister was accorded full state honours, including a 19-gun salute, for her priceless service. State-run television broadcast live footage of her flag-draped coffin being solemnly carried by Pakistani soldiers in the southern city of Karachi.

Mourners paid their last respects on Aug. 19 as her body was carried to the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre that she founded before being taken on to St. Patrick's Cathedral for her final rites. The body was then taken to Karachi's Christian cemetery Gora Qabaristan, where she was laid to rest.

The burial ceremony was attended by many state dignitaries including President Mamnoon Hussain, the chief minister and governor of Sindh province as well as several top officials of Pakistan’s armed forces. Vice Admiral Zafar Mahmood Abbasi, who laid floral wreaths on her grave.

Widely known as Pakistan's Mother Teresa, Sr. Pfau died on Aug. 10 at age 87, after being admitted to Karachi’s Aga Khan Hospital a few days earlier suffering from old age complications.

Mission to serve

Born on Sept. 9, 1929 in Leipzig, Sr. Ruth Pfau studied medicine in the1950s at the universities of Mainz and Marburg in then West Germany. After her graduation she joined the religious order of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, which sent her on mission to India. On her way she stopped in Karachi on March 8, 1960, because of some visa problems. It was here that she became involved with working with people affected by leprosy or Hansen’s Disease.

In 1961 she went to Vellore, South India to acquire training in the management of Leprosy. She then returned to Karachi to organize and expand the Leprosy Control Programme. Her Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi, Pakistan's first hospital dedicated to treating the disease, today has 157 branches across the country.

Recognition

Sr. Pfau has won numerous honours and prizes in Pakistan and abroad for her humanitarian services. Germany awarded her the Order of Merit in 1969. In 1979, the Pakistani government appointed her Federal Advisor on Leprosy to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. Pakistani government honoured her with the Hilal-e-Imtiaz in 1979 and the Hilal-e-Pakistan in 1989. She was granted Pakistani citizenship in 1988. In 2002 she won the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, regarded as Asia’s Nobel prize.

Catholic Herald: Mother Teresa to be canonised on September 4

Source: Catholic Herald
by Staff Reporter
posted Tuesday, 15 Mar 2016

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta pictured in 1993 (AP)

The canonisation Mass will conclude the Vatican Jubilee for 'workers and volunteers of mercy'

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be canonised on September 4, the Vatican has announced.

The canonisation Mass at which Mother Teresa will be declared a saint will conclude the Vatican Jubilee for “workers and volunteers of mercy”, according to Catholic News Service.

The canonisation, which was approved at a consistory at the Vatican today, comes the day before the 19th anniversary of Blessed Teresa’s death, September 5, 1997.

On December 17, Pope Francis approved a second miracle attributed to Blessed Teresa’s intercession. That miracle involved the healing of a now 42-year-old mechanical engineer in Santos, Brazil, who was in a coma after being diagnosed with a viral brain infection that resulted in multiple brain abscesses

The Vatican has also announced that Blessed Stanislaus Papczynski and Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad will be canonised on June 5.

Argentine priest Blessed Gabriel del Rosario Brochero and Mexico’s Blessed Sanchez del Rio to be canonised on October 16.

Mother Teresa’s canonization date expected on March 15 ‎

Source: Vatican Radio 2016-March-07

Pope Francis will hold an ordinary public consistory of cardinals in the Vatican March 15, during which he will sign the decree for the canonization of Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata and four others. The dates and venue of their sainthood ceremony are expected to be declared at the consistory. Pope Francis had officially cleared Blessed Mother Teresa for sainthood on Dec. 17, 2015, recognizing the miraculous healing through her intercession of a Brazilian man with multiple brain abscesses. Mother Teresa was conferred the title Blessed in Rome, Italy, on October 19, 2003, after Pope St. John Paul II recognized the miraculous healing of an Indian woman with a tumour in her abdomen.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu‎ of Albanian parents on ‎August 26, 1910, in Skopje, in what ‎is ‎Macedonia today, Mother Teresa died in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, on September 5, ‎‎1997. ‎Affectionately known as the "saint of the gutter" for her unconditional ‎love ‎for the poor, abandoned and the marginalized, she earned several international honours, including ‎the ‎Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. ‎

SAINT MOTHER TERESA OF KOLKATA, PRAY FOR US!

Mother Teresa to be made a saint by Catholic Church

Source: Inforum
By Reuters Media

Catholic nuns from the order of the Missionaries of Charity gather under a picture of Mother Teresa during the tenth anniversary of her death in Kolkata, India, in this September 5, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw/Files

VATICAN CITY - Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the Nobel peace laureate who dedicated her life to helping the poorest, is to be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican said on Friday.

Pope Francis has cleared the way for sainthood by approving a decree recognizing a second miracle attributed to her intercession with God, a requirement of sainthood.

The nun, who died in 1997 at the age of 87, became an international icon but has also been criticized for trying to convert people to Christianity.

The late Pope John Paul II bent Vatican rules to allow the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be launched two years after her death instead of the usual five. She was beatified in 2003, a mere six years after her death.

Beatification requires one miracle and is the last step before sainthood, which requires a second.

The church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven with God.

Francis, who has made concern for the poor a major plank of his papacy, was keen to make Mother Teresa a saint during the church's current Holy Year.

Church officials say Mother Teresa's second miracle involved the healing of a Brazilian man suffering from a viral brain infection that resulted in multiple abscesses with hydrocephalus.

Relatives prayed to Mother Teresa and he recovered, leaving his doctors mystified, they said. A Vatican medical commission deemed the sudden recovery "inexplicable in the light of present-day medical knowledge," according to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the chief promoter of the sainthood cause.

"CHRISTMAS GIFT"

In Kolkata, as Calcutta is now called, Sunita Kumar, spokeswoman for the Missionaries of Charity religious order which Mother Teresa founded, said the nuns were "over the moon" at the news.

"We thought her whole life was a miracle. Her whole life was dedicated to the poor and there was nothing else in her mind than service. Everyone was accepted and there was no obstruction in her work," she told Reuters.

Archbishop Thomas D'Souza of Kolkata told Reuters the news from Rome was "the best Christmas gift," adding: "Her entire life and work was for the poor. Now it is in a way officially recognized. We are grateful to God."

In the years since her death, some have accused Mother Teresa and the order of having ulterior motives in helping the destitute, saying their aim was to convert them to Christianity.

The order rejects that, saying, for example, that most of those helped in the Kalighat Home for Dying Destitutes in Kolkata were non-Christians with just a few days left to live and noting that conversion is a lengthy process.

The order has also denied allegations of financial mismanagement of the huge sums it received from donors.

Known as the "saint of the gutters," the diminutive nun is expected to be canonized - formally made a saint - in early September. It is not clear if the ceremony will take place in Rome or if the pope will travel to India to preside.

It would be the first trip by a pope to India since 1999.

Mother Teresa was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in Macedonia in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire.

She founded the Missionaries of Charity with about a dozen nuns in the 1950s to help the poor on the streets of Calcutta and the religious order spread throughout the world. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

The "little" woman who united the UN assembly in prayer

McLean: Beware of the celebrity priesthood

Written by Dorothy Cummings McLean

Dorothy Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer living abroad. She recently published her book "Seraphic Singles".

Dorothy has an MA in English literature from the University of Toronto, an M.Div./STB from Regis College and spent two years in doctoral studies in theology at Boston College.

Checking the headlines of Catholic Internet media every day has its down side. The stories are often sad. Catholic journalists, paid and unpaid, professional or amateur, report everything that might be of interest to other Catholics, and thus not a week goes by in which some scandal, minor or major, is presented to the public worldwide. These scandals, I hasten to add, rarely have anything to do with the Gospel. These scandals, more often than not, detail sins of commission or omission committed by priests, bishops or other Catholic leaders. Not only do they disgust and depress Catholics, they erode our trust in God’s ministers and messengers.

Three cases in particular have troubled my thoughts in recent months. One, coming out of Australia, is so vile I dare not discuss it in a family newspaper. The others are merely distasteful and disappointing, so I will confine my thoughts to them.

Ten Catholics Doing Amazing Work

By Mary ORegan

Source: Catholic Herald UK

Mary O’Regan profiles 10 Catholics who are quietly using their talents in the service of others in an astonishing variety of fields

1. Gerry Straub

Gerry Straub in Haiti (NCR)

Gerry Straub has had an illustrious career as a television producer in New York and Hollywood, producing extremely popular shows such as General Hospital and The Doctors. But he is now applying his considerable expertise as a film producer, filmmaker, and critically acclaimed author to uncover the living conditions of the world’s poorest people.

Straub has written and directed 18 documentaries, including Embracing the Leper, which shows a Secular Franciscan valiantly bringing support to the lepers of the Brazilian Amazon. Straub is himself a Secular Franciscan, and founder of the San Damiano Foundation. This organisation makes films about the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan care of the poor. One such notable film is Where Love Is, which shows the work of a Capuchin soup kitchen in Detroit. Straub has taught television directing at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Cardinal Bertone: 'Christians the Most Persecuted Religious Group in the World'

By Deacon Keith Fournier
'We die, we die, okay. But the cross lives'

'If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.... because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you... No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.' (John 15:18-20)

CHESAPEAKE, VA. (Catholic Online) - The fourth Gospel contains a stirring "promise" of the Bible. It is rarely recounted by some contemporary preachers who often refer to the "promises" of the Bible in a manner that seems to imply we can all be "healthy, wealthy and wise" if we simply "claim" them. However, this promise is found in all of the Gospel accounts and comes right from the mouth of the Lord Himself:

Early Christian Martyrs

"If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you." (John 15:18-20)

Most of our readers know that I write often about the growing persecution faced by our brothers and sisters throughout the world. Just yesterday we published a stunning account from a survivor of the evil attack on Catholics during Holy Mass at Our Lady of Salvation (Deliverance) in Iraq. Here is an excerpt:

Sister (Dr.) Ruth Pfau, Pakistan's "Mother Teresa"

Let those BELONGING to CULTS who say they are "Christians" BUT branded Catholics as of the "devil" be ASHAMED of themselves for doing nothing to uplift the suffering humanity in Pakistan and the rest of the world.

Here is Sister Ruth Pfau, a saintly nun working in Pakistan for years.  From Wikipedia - Ruth Pfau is recognised in Pakistan and abroad as a distinguished human being and has been awarded many prizes and medals. Sister Ruth Pfau was among recipients of civilian awards at President's House on Pakistan Day March 23, 1989. Sister Pfau received the Hilal-i-Pakistan award for her work with leprosy patients. Speaking at a function in Islamabad on January 30, 2000, to mark the 47th World Leprosy Day, President Rafiq Tarar praised Sister Ruth Pfau, who built up the National Leprosy Control Program in Pakistan, for working not only for those afflicted with leprosy, but also for those with TB. On the occasion of Pakistan Independence Day on 14 August 2010, the President of Pakistan awarded the very high civil award of Nishan-i-Quaid-i-Azam to Dr. Pfau for public service. In 2010 after her work helping people “nobody else is willing or able, or ever thought of helping,” people displaced by Pakistan's recent deadly flooding, she is being hailed as Pakistan's 'Mother Teresa'.

Read also this article: A German Mother Teresa among the flood victims of Pakistan