No Sainthood by 2000 for Mother Teresa

THE OTTAWA CITIZEN, March 28—The Canadian priest in charge of Mother Teresa's cause for sainthood said there is no way she can be declared a saint in time for the millennium, according to a report by the Citizen's Bob Harvey.

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk said public and media hopes for a quick canonization were raised March 1 when Pope John Paul II waived the normal five-year waiting period before she can be officially considered as a possible saint. Even Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor, had her hopes raised by the possibility of sainthood by the year 2000.

“That would be nice, to have an exceptional model of holiness from the end of one century become a model of sainthood for the next century. But my expectation is that it's not going to happen,” Father Kolodiejchuk told the paper.

“Normally the process of canonization takes at least 20 years,” he said in a telephone interview with the Citizen.

Cardinal Stepinac Recruits a ‘Smuggler’

THE UNIVERSE, March 28—Pope John Paul II's beatification last October of Aloysius Stepinac has prompted one woman to recall a dangerous favor she once performed for the Croatian prelate, according to the British Catholic weekly.

Frances Chilcoat was in Rome in 1962 en route to visit relatives in Yugoslavia when Father Ivan Tomas went out of his way to befriend her and win her confidence, all to ask a special favor: would she smuggle a set of cardinal's robes to Archbishop Stepinac, who had recently been released from jail by the communists and was living under house arrest?

In order to allay her fears, Father Tomas told Chilcoat that Pope John XXIII would be praying for her. She agreed and left on her mission, which she thought was doomed when a communist official suddenly demanded to see the contents of her suitcase during the final leg of her train trip into Yugoslavia. The official cut his hand on the broken case and quickly withdrew, never to return. Ironically, several attempts by Chilcoat to have the case repaired in Rome had not been successful. She still “wonders if the incident wasn't a small miracle,” reported the Universe.