BATON ROUGE - Mother Teresa has a clear pathway to sainthood after Pope Francis approved a second miracle. A priest from the Lafayette-area who know her says there's no one more deserving.

"It's an eerie feeling to know someone that was your friend is now a saint in heaven," Fr. Joseph Brennan says.

Fr. Brennan met Mother Teresa in 1976 when she was speaking in New Orleans, and she invited him to Calcutta. A friendship was immediately formed.

"She was a person I could pick up the phone and call and feel better for having called," Fr. Brennan explains.

He says she had a sense of humor and called hearing her laugh "something". He calls her determined, compassionate and a true friend in a book he wrote about their friendship.

"I just wish more people would get to know the whole Mother Teresa," he says. "She was warm. She carried the vision of Jesus; especially to treet the poor and unloved. She's now a full saint in the church, and I hope, still my friend."

A date for Mother Teresa's canonization has not been set, but it's expected to be next September, around the anniversary of her death.