There are many things about Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta that
could be called heroic – her tireless service to the world's most
rejected and her courageous witness to millions of what it is to live
the Gospel, just to name a couple. But the priest charged with overseeing her path to sainthood said
that for him, one thing stands out above all the rest: her experience of
spiritual darkness and what she described as feeling totally abandoned
by God for the majority of her life. “The single most heroic thing is exactly her darkness. That pure
living, that pure, naked faith,” Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator
for Mother Teresa's canonization cause, told CNA in an interview. Fr.
Kolodiejchuk is a priest of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, founded
by Mother Teresa in 1989. By undergoing the depth and duration of the desolation she
experienced and doing everything that she did for others in spite of it,
“that's really very heroic,” he said. Pope Francis recently approved the second and last miracle needed in
order to declare Mother Teresa a saint, and has set the date of her
canonization for Sept. 4, 2016 – the day before her feast day. Read more here.
The release of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s note, Mater Populi Fidelis , on November 4, 2025, seems to have sparked some immediate and widespread confusion, driven largely by sensationalist headlines from secular sources. In response to requests, particularly surrounding a potential Fifth Marian Dogma of Spiritual Maternity , the DDF addressed the usage of titles like Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix. Unfortunately, this has led to a large contingent online and in the media claiming that the Church has "tossed out" centuries of doctrine, with some outside the Church even proclaiming a "victory" over Catholic teaching (This may be the saddest part of it all, that we as Christians, are "competing" with each other). It is essential to understand that this doctrinal note is fundamentally about titles and clarity, not doctrine and change according to the Vatican News. The true teachings regarding Mary's unique role in salvation remain inviolabl...