The 'miracles' that led to Mother Teresa's sainthood

Vatican City: The process of granting sainthood to Mother Teresa began after the Roman Catholic Church recognised two miracles attributed to her after her death.

The first case was that of a tribal women from Bengal's South Dinajpur district named Monica Besra, whose "miraculous cure" started the process - in 2003 - of declaring the Mother a saint.

Diagnosed with a cancerous ovarian tumour and facing death, Besra was "miraculously cured" in 1998 during prayers with some nuns of the Missionaries of Charity -- the Mother's order -- on the occasion of the first anniversary of her death.

Besra has said in earlier interviews that she was so sick and could barely walk when she found herself before a photo of Mother Teresa. It was then that she saw a "blinding light". The nuns are then said to have pressed a religious medallion on her belly -- and when she awoke a few hours later, she was cured.

Besra's cure was subsequently recognised by the Vaticanand Mother Teresa was beatified in 2003 as the "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta".

The second miracle was from Brazil, where a person had been healed miraculously as a result of her earlier prayers.

Marcilio Haddad Andrino, the Brazilian man whose "miraculous" cure from a brain infection paved the way for Mother Teresa's canonization, said he is just one example of God's ample mercy and love.

"The merciful Lord looks at us all without distinction...maybe it was me this time but maybe tomorrow it will be someone else. The merciful mother looks after everyone. I don't feel special," he said.

Pope Francis in December decreed that Andrino's cure was a miracle after Vatican doctors and theologians determined that it was medically inexplicable, instantaneous, lasting and due to the intercession of Mother Teresa, who died in 1997. It was the final step needed to canonize the nun who cared for the poorest of the poor.

Mother Teresa died on Sept. 5, 1997.