'I prayed with all the strength I had': Wife reveals how Mother Teresa 'cured' her husband's brain infection on the eve of famous nun becoming a saint

A man whose 'miraculous' cure from a brain infection paved the way for Mother Teresa's canonisation this weekend insisted 'I don't feel special'. 

Marcilio Haddad Andrino said the nun, who died in 1997 'looks after everyone' and had not singled him out. 

Speaking outside the Vatican on Friday, the Brazilian said he is just one example of God's ample mercy and love.

'The merciful Lord looks at us all without distinction,' Mr Andrino said.

Marcilio Haddad Andrino, pictured with his wife, Fernanda Nascimento Rocha, was said to have been cured of a brain infection after Mother Teresa's intercession

Andrino said the nun, who died in 1997 'looks after everyone' and had not singled him out. He stood on stage at the Vatican with his wife and Sister Mary Prema Pierick (left)

Speaking outside the Vatican on Friday, the Brazilian said he is just one example of God's ample mercy and love

'Maybe it was me this time but maybe tomorrow it will be someone else. The merciful mother looks after everyone. I don't feel special.'

Pope Francis decreed Andrino's cure a miracle in December after Vatican doctors and theologians determined that it was medically inexplicable and due to the intercession of Mother Teresa.

This was the final step needed to canonize the nun who cared for the poorest of the poor.

All 100,000 tickets for the canonisation have already been distributed for Sunday's Mass but the crowd will likely be far greater, spilling into the main streets around St. Peter's Square.

So far, 15 official delegations have confirmed their presence, 13 of them led by heads of state or government, and 600 journalists have been accredited.

'Maybe it was me this time but maybe tomorrow it will be someone else. The merciful mother looks after everyone. I don't feel special,' he told the audience. 

Pope Francis decreed Andrino's cure a miracle in December after Vatican doctors and theologians determined that it was medically inexplicable and due to the intercession of Mother Teresa

All 100,000 tickets for the canonisation have already been distributed for Sunday's Mass but the crowd will likely be far greater, spilling into the main streets around St. Peter's Square

A woman holds a silver coin that was minted by the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia to celebrate Mother Teresa's canonisation

Andrino's wife, Fermanda Nascimento Rocha, said she and her family began praying for Mother Teresa's intercession after receiving a relic of her in September 2008. 

This was after Andrino began suffering from the effects of a viral brain infection.

By December of that year, despite powerful antibiotics, the brain abscesses and fluid had built up so much that Andrino was suffering debilitating headaches. 

According to the official story, doctors decided the only chance was to operate, but on the day surgery was scheduled, they couldn't intubate him.

'When the doctor left the OR saying he couldn't do the operation — and that the medicine wasn't working anymore — I prayed a lot,' Nascimento Rocha said. 

A nun of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity kisses Pope Francis in St Peter's Square during the audience for workers and volunteers of mercy at the Vatican. The square will host Mother Teresa's canonisation on Sunday

A Missionaries of Charity nun greets Pope Francis upon his arrival in St Peter's Square for an audience with the volunteers

Pope Francis kisses a child in St Peter's Square. Mother Teresa's canonisation is set to draw tens of thousands of faithful to recognise the sainthood of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner

Actors perform as nuns of the Missionary of Charity, the Religious family founded by Mother Teresa

'I asked Mother to cure Marcilio if this is God's will, and if not, to take him by the hand and bring him to the house of the Father to feel his caress.'

She said she went to her mother's home and prayed 'with all the strength I had.'

When the surgeon returned to Andrino's room, he was awake, pain-free and asymptomatic, according to the priest spearheading Mother Teresa's sainthood cause, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk.

Within six months, Andrino said Friday, he had returned to work. Soon after, the couple conceived the first of their two children, though Andrino had been told that the powerful drugs he had taken had made him infertile.

He calls his two children 'the extension of that miracle.'

'We are very grateful to Mother Teresa for our family,' he said.

MOTHER TERESA: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC NUN WHO COULD 'CURE TUMOURS'

Mother Teresa was said to have 'miraculously cured' an Indian woman of a stomach tumour after she prayed to her

Mother Teresa was born to ethnic Albanian parents on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia. 

Deeply religious, she became a nun at the age of 16, joining the Loreto abbey in Ireland. Two years later she was given the name Sister Teresa.

In early 1929 she moved to Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, where she became a teacher and, 15 years on, headmistress at a convent school.

In 1946 she received 'a call within a call' to found the Missionaries of Charity, officially established as a religious congregation in 1950. Nuns of the order began calling her Mother Teresa.

In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for the world's destitute. "I am unworthy," she said.

On September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa died of a heart attack at her order's headquarters in Kolkata. An array of world dignitaries attended her funeral.

In late 2002, the Vatican ruled that an Indian woman's stomach tumour had been miraculously cured after prayers to Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul wanted to declare her a saint immediately, bypassing the beatification process, but was dissuaded by cardinals.

In December 2015, Pope Francis opened the way for her canonisation by approving a decree recognising a second miracle attributed to her intercession with God -- the healing of a Brazilian who recovered from a severe brain infection in 2008.