On Sunday, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the nun who gained global fame for her ministry to the poor and sick, was officially recognized as a Catholic saint.
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She was someone who “taught us to contemplate and adore Jesus every day, and to recognize Him and serve Him as well as to recognize and serve our brothers in need”, Pope Francis addressing thousands in the Saint Peter’s Square.
“I think, perhaps, we may have some difficulty in calling her St. Teresa: Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful, that we continue to spontaneously call her Mother Teresa”, the Pope said in off-the-cuff remarks during his homily.
Obviously, both will leave a legacy of devotion to the poor. Mother Teresa died just 19 years ago.
Francis said St Theresa shamed world leaders for their “crimes of poverty”.
Those parishioners – the entire community for that matter – took a special and personal interest in the canonization ceremonies for Mother Teresa in Rome on Sunday.
This is not to say she was without critics.
Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity – the order founded by the Mother to minister to the poorest of the poor and the infirm – and Roman catholic priests lit candles and held an early morning mass before her tomb in the congregation’s headquarters Mother House. She established the Missionaries of Charity, which in turn opened hospice centers for the blind, the elderly and the disabled.
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton met Mother Teresa at the opening of the Mother Teresa Home for Infant Children in Washington DC in 1995. She already had her eye on another piece of property, where she could expand her shelter and build a playground for the children. Critics of the Nobel Peace Prize victor says her charity isn’t financially accountable and lacks medically trained personnel.
According to a media report, the late Pope John Paul II had adjusted Vatican rules to allow the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be carried out two years after her death.
She once said that if she ever became a saint, she would be continuously absent from Heaven to shine a light on those living in darkness on Earth, Gomez said.
“She gave herself to everybody, and that’s a marvelous thing”, said one person in attendance.
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When asked about it, he said, “I love my mother and thank you Mother Teresa for bringing us together”. As a young woman, she felt called to minister to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
