In his first foreign trip, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal will be visiting Vatican City to attend Mother Teresa’s sainthood ceremony on September 4. Kejriwal will be joined by his West Bengal and Trinamool Congress counterpart Mamata Banerjee, who had earlier agreed to attend the ceremony.
Mother Teresa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, will be declared a saint by Pope Francis. She was beatified in 2003, considered as the first step to sainthood. Earlier in March this year, Pope Francis announced that Mother Teresa would be canonised on September 4, on the eve of her 19th death anniversary.
Mother Teresa died in 1997 at the age of 87.
Kejriwal’s move to accept the invitation to attend the ceremony was also being viewed as a political move. The AAP spin doctors believe that his attending the ceremony will also boost the AAP’s electoral prospects in Goa, which has a significant Catholic population of nearly 30 per cent.