Pope to accept Mother Teresa's blood

Tuesday, 14 October , 2003, 00:33

Vatican City: Drops of blood from the body of Mother Teresa, who will be beatified next Sunday, are to be presented in a reliquary to Pope John Paul II, church sources said today.

The pontiff will receive the relic during the beatification ceremony, Canadian priest Brian Kolodiejchuk told AFP.

The reliquary would be be placed in the popes private chapel, said Father Kolodiejchuk, a missionary from a charity working with the postulator, or advocate presenting the case for beatification.

The blood was taken from the body of Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, by a doctor acting under the supervision of ecclesiastical authorities when the body was exhumed for beatification.

Nuns belonging to Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity began arriving in Rome today for the ceremony.

One group arrived from Mumbai and New Delhi, wearing their traditional blue-edged white saris, while a second flew in from Atlanta in the United States accompanied by the secretary general of the synod of bishops, Belgian Cardinal Jan Pieter Schotte.

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