ROME - A weighty dossier on the life of Mother Teresa includes details of a healing miracle performed after she died, one of the people working to have her made a saint said in remarks released Tuesday.
In an advance copy of Famiglia Cristiana magazine, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk said an Indian woman with a stomach tumor miraculously recovered after being touched with a medal that had been in contact with Mother Teresa's body.
"During the night, the woman woke up and realized the tumor had gone. Subsequent checks by doctors showed it never came back," Kolodiejchuk was quoted as saying.
Kolodiejchuk is part of a Diocesan Commission created in 1999 to collate information about Mother Teresa's life to set her on the road to sainthood by beatifying her.
Beatification requires at least one proven miracle after the candidate's death which must be the result of a person praying to the candidate for intercession with God.
Kolodiejchuk said nuns from Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity order had prayed over the ill woman, Monika Besra, on Sept. 5, 1998, exactly a year after Mother Teresa died.
"On her stomach, they put a 'miraculous medal' which had been in contact with Mother Teresa's body before she was buried," he said. "The tumor disappeared."
Mother Teresa, born in Skopje, now Macedonia's capital, inspired millions around the world with her work with the poor and sick on the streets of Calcutta where she founded the Missionaries of Charity order 52 years ago.
Usually at least five years must pass between a person dying and the beatification process starting but in 1999, Pope John Paul II gave special dispensation for Mother Teresa's case.
The Diocesan Committee has gathered together 35,000 pages of information on the diminutive nun's life which will now be handed over to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints which will evaluate the evidence.
The congregation will then make a recommendation in the form of a "positio" or position paper to be studied by theologians, cardinals and bishops who will eventually take a vote and inform the pope of the result. The pope has the final say.
"It will probably take at least two years to prepare the positio and then the examination of that paper will probably need another year after that," Kolodiejchuk said.