WORLD : Mother Teresa’s Nuns to Vote
The nuns of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity gathered today to elect a successor to “a saint.”
Pleading old age and ill health, Mother Teresa is stepping down as head of her order two weeks after her 80th birthday and a year after she suffered a near-fatal heart attack.
Pope John Paul II, who had rejected her earlier pleas to step aside, accepted her resignation last March.
Her successor is expected to be one of the six nuns who serve on the council administering the order, which operate 430 homes in 95 countries under the mission to “help the poorest of the poor”--lepers, the severely handicapped and maimed and abandoned infants.
More than 100 nuns are expected to cast secret ballots Saturday.
The order’s new superior general will be announced at the Vatican after the Pope approves the decision.
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