Mother Teresa: A saint despite spiritual ‘darkness’

Vatican City, Aug 31 (AP) When Pope Francis canonizesMother Teresa on Sunday, he’ll be honoring a nun who wonadmirers around the world and a Nobel Peace Prize for herjoy-filled dedication to the "poorest of the poor." He’ll also be recognising holiness in a woman who felt soabandoned by God that she was unable to pray and wasconvinced, despite her ever-present smile, that she wasexperiencing the "tortures of hell." For nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa endured what the churchcalls a "dark night of the soul" a period of spiritual doubt,despair and loneliness that many of the great mysticsexperienced, her namesake St. Therese of Lisieux included. InMother Teresa’s case, the dark night lasted most of her adultlife, an almost unheard of trial. No one but Mother Teresa’s spiritual directors and bishopknew of her spiritual agony until her correspondence came tolight during her beatification cause. The letters were thenmade available to the general public in a 2007 book, "Come BeMy Light." For the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest whopublished the letters and spearheaded Mother Teresa’s saint-making campaign, the revelations were further confirmation ofMother Teresa’s heroic saintliness. He said that by canonizingher, Francis is recognising that Mother Teresa not only sharedthe material poverty of the poor but the spiritual poverty ofthose who feel "unloved, unwanted, uncared for." "That was her experience in her relationship with Jesus,"Kolodiejchuk said in an interview. "She understood very wellwhen people would share their horror stories, their pain andsuffering of being unloved, lonely. She would be able to sharethat empathy because she herself was experiencing it." Tens of thousands of people are expected for thecanonization ceremony Sunday for the tiny, stooped nun who wasfast-tracked for sainthood just a year after she died in 1997. St. John Paul II, who was Mother Teresa’s greatestchampion, beatified her before a crowd of 300,000 in St.Peter’s Square in 2003. Francis has made the canonization the high point of hisJubilee of Mercy, a yearlong emphasis on the church’s mercifulside. Francis has an obvious interest in highlighting MotherTeresa’s mercy-filled service to outcasts on the periphery,given that her life’s work exemplifies the priorities of hisown pontificate. But Francis is also sending a more subtle message to thefaithful through the canonization of the ethnic Albanian nun:That saints can be imperfect they can suffer as Mother Teresadid and even feel unloved by God, said Ines Angeli Murzaku, aprofessor of church history at Seton Hall University in NewJersey and herself a native Albanian. (AP)SUA