Tourists in downtown Calcutta (or Kolkata, as we must all now learn to say) cannot fail to be struck by a 50 foot mosaic of the city’s most famous immigrant, Mother Teresa . The Skopje-born nun is smiling benignly on the snarled-up traffic chaos that belches and honks beneath her. To one side of the giant wall art is an advertisement proclaiming: “Reserved for Calcutta’s Best Brands.”

Mother Teresa is Calcutta’s best brand. Later this month when, in record time, the Pope bestows on her the Vatican super seal of approval, declaring her blessed, she will be well on her way to becoming a saint. Hers will probably become the fastest sainthood since the Roman Catholic Church set rules controlling saint- making in the 13th century – thus formally recognising her global brand of goodness and mercy. Why the haste?

The saint-making rules had already been streamlined by the time of John Paul 11’s accession. The ancient position of “Devil’s Advocate” had been abolished and the process of deciding which candidates are worthy of sainthood can now start before the customary five years is up- a pause once thought necessary to establish a truly holy reputation. Further fast tracking for the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity was inevitable, too, given the close personal rapport between the Pope and Mother Teresa. Both come from parts of Eastern Europe which saw the full horrors of communism. Also, his pontificate coincided with her award of the Nobel Peace Prize and both preached the same unyielding conservative message of Catholicism. She was already, in her life time, declared the living saint and her mission – mostly tending to the dying in a predominantly Hindu country – strikes a particular chord for this ecumenical Pope. Mother Teresa is perhaps the least controversial canonisation imaginable.

“There is no way Mother Teresa was going to be 361 on a list of 360,” Monsignor Robert Sarno of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican body which oversees the process, commented.

But proclaiming her a saint – or, in the first instance, beatifying her; canonisation may but does not always follow – requires proof of a divine miracle and it is here that the cynics and rationalists, and even many supporters, start to hum and ho. By all means announce that she’s a saint – how many of us would pull maggots out of an open wound (more on the maggots later) – but why not just declare her a saint by acclaim? For centuries Christians in towns and villages simply proclaimed a local hero and protector a saint, vide the much invoked St Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost property, and others.

There is an especially strong paradox in Mother Teresa’s case since she was not devoting her efforts to effecting miracle cures. Doctors and nurses, even those who wished to join her Order, had no particular role to play there. She said many times she was, quite simply, demonstrating Christ’s love in action by helping people die a beautiful death, not by helping them live an extra few years.

So why the need for a miracle? Because it is the only way to insist that God, not man, has directly and specifically intervened in the process. “Otherwise she could just be a creation of the media, couldn’t she?” is how Msgr Sarno, one of the Vatican’s most savvy priests, explained.

For the last few months, I have been pondering the question why the present Pope is so keen on making saints – at least 465 at the last count and some 1, 300 beatifications – more than all the canonisations and beatifications in the preceding 400 years. Each one, unless the saint in question died a martyr’s death, demands at least one miracle for beatification and another for canonisation. It used to be double for each stage. Filming in Rome and India the story of the so-called miracle effected by Mother Teresa, I think we have found some of the answers. The most straight forward is that saints are a useful teaching aid. These are ordinary people who in the face of great difficulties have led virtuous and heroic lives, thereby setting an example for the rest of us. There is no agenda, nothing political about the revolutionary boom in saints, the Vatican insists.

Nonetheless, some of the candidates for sainthood have been controversial: Pope Pius 1X, beatified in 2000, was well known for his reactionary views that the secular state and civil rights were satanic manifestations and his endorsement of the removal of a Jewish child, Edgar Mortara, from his family after he had been secretly baptised.

Then there is Pius X11, severely criticised for not doing enough to oppose the Holocaust and described as “a deeply flawed human being” in a recent biography, whose cause is currently on hold. The founder of Opus Dei , an organisation which has aroused as much suspicion as admiration, Josemaria Escriva de Balguer, was canonised in record time (just 27 years after his death compared with Joan of Arc who had to wait 600) while the cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, gunned down at the altar in El Salvador by right wing vigilantes, has not progressed although he is venerated locally.

In our quest, we have canvassed a wide variety of opinions including religious commentators, doctors, Indian rationalists, the Postulator of Mother Teresa’s Cause and the novelist, Michele Roberts. She recognises that the Pope himself was once a writer who therefore understands only too clearly the need for a powerful narrative thread to turn Mother Teresa’s life into a story befitting the hagiographies of the Golden Legend.

We also met the miracle lady herself. Monica Besra is an illiterate tribal woman, mother of five children, who appears composed and elegant as she recounts her story. She was suffering from headaches, fever and a large abdominal lump which, after several months of intermittently taking anti-tubercular medicines and visiting a variety of doctors, was getting worse. She could no longer afford any more treatment and, in a very weak condition was taken to the Missionaries of Charity home in Patiram for rest. Monica herself thought she was going to die . On September 5, 1998, the first anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death, the nuns not only prayed for her recovery they placed a small medallion , once touched by Mother Teresa herself, on Monica’s stomach. In the morning the lump had disappeared. It is the speed of her recovery which, according to Professor Bonomo, Head of the Vatican Medical Board, makes her cure inexplicable. It must also be declared spontaneous, complete and permanent before being considered by the Theological Board: it was.

Besra’s version of events is convincing while the doctors remain frustrated that the best they had done was not, in the end, believed to be good enough. She has been cured. Those with faith will say it is a divine miracle wrought by the intercession of Mother Teresa; others maintain that science one day will have the answer for what happened even if it does not yet. Some things can never be known.

Miracles or no, the tragedy of poverty remains, as everyone does know and few do anything about, which is one reason Mother Teresa inspired such devotion. She was doing it perhaps on behalf of us all. I , and many others who go to look see, can leave after a few days even if we bring home some painfully abiding images. For me these were the homeless who collect their daily dahl from the Missionaries of Charity in leaky plastic carriers, carefully scooping up any grains that spill on the dirty ground with equally dirty fingers; the beautiful young Bangladeshi refugee who lived on the street but bothered to dress her boys in smart matching shirts and wear dazzling earrings herself; the homeless beggar we befriended for a day who begged us above all not to forget about him when we returned; and finally the 22 year old boy dying of TB in Nirmal Hriday, tended so lovingly by a German volunteer named Andy.

And there, in the Home for the Dying, I was confronted by the best and the worst of the Mother Teresa brand of compassion. More than fifty years after the home opened the piercing screams of an old man having maggots tweezed from an open wound rent the humid air. Of course this is noble work of the highest degree. But, as an experienced palliative care nurse who works in India made clear, these days pain relief is available. Sometimes love is not enough. Suffering can be alleviated.
Six years after her death, there is still more than one version of Mother Teresa and her work. Whatever the verdict on Mother Teresa, many would agree with her on one important fact: faith can be a powerful tool. One of the reasons for making saints is to ensure that the narrative version that endures for centuries is the Vatican-endorsed one. Making Mother Teresa a saint will capture for eternity her symbolic power as a crusader against the values of the modern secular world. I think she would be pleased by that.