The 'Complex, Mysterious' Path to Sainthood of Mother Teresa

Agnes Bojaxhiu (known best to the world as Mother Teresa) will be canonized Sunday at the Vatican, and half a million people are expected to be present in St. Peter's Square as one of the world's most famous religious icons attains sainthood in a two-hour ceremony led by Pope Francis, the Guardian reports. As the public enjoys the various cultural events being held around the Vatican in the days leading up to the occasion, the media is sharing nuggets and nostalgia about the Albanian-born nun:

• The saint-making process in general is a "complex, mysterious" one, Reuters notes. And it's one that's often "more bureaucratic than beatific." The story takes a look at how it works.
• Mother Teresa had to get two miracles under her belt before she could ascend to sainthood. NPR examines the church's verification process, in this case involving a woman with a stomach tumor and a Brazilian man with brain abscesses.
• The holy mother lived poverty "as a virtue," Grazie Pozo Christie writes for the Washington Post, using her own life as a "a long and moving illustration of the relationship between Christianity and poverty." And we're not just talking material poverty.
• Not everyone has been enamored with Mother Teresa and her charity over the years. CBS News and NBC News look at the criticism that's been lobbed her way—including allegations of shoddy health care, "cozying up to dictators," and promoting the virtue of suffering more than solutions to remedy it.
• She deserves sainthood anyway, despite perhaps being "less than perfect as a human being," per Jay Parini, writing for CNN.
• The Irish Times looks back on Mother Teresa's beginnings as a nun in Dublin in the late 1920s, where she learned English and planted roots that would bring her back to Ireland many times over her lifetime.

(More Mother Teresa stories.)