Vatican officials have approved a "miracle" attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, moving the world-famous nun, who died in 1997, closer to sainthood.

Vatican sources say the miracle was examined in a closed-door meeting between doctors and officials from the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

In the case before the committee, a 30-year-old Indian woman, Monica Besra, was allegedly healed of stomach cancer after praying to the nun.

Hundreds of other alleged miracles have also been reported.

The Pope accelerated Mother Teresa's sainthood process

Officials declared the incident scientifically inexplicable, and if the Pope signs a decree approving the miracle, Mother Teresa could be beatified next year.

After the beatification ceremony, another miracle must be approved before Mother Teresa officially becomes a saint.

Normally, five years must pass after a person dies before the Catholic Church can begin proceedings to declare the deceased a saint.

But the Pope allowed the procedure for Mother Teresa to begin in 1999, just two years after the Nobel-Prize-winning nun died at the age of 87.

The Vatican's saint-making Congregation for the Causes of Saints has been conducting an investigation into her life, and supporters have filed reams of documents.

Born in Skopje, in what is now the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, to Albanian parents, Mother Teresa founded her order in Calcutta, India, in 1950.

Her followers in the Missionaries of Charity still work with the poor around the world.