With Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016 making the canonization of Mother Teresa, Pope Francis honored the tiny nun who cared for the “poorest of the poor” as the epitome of his call for mercy. Christopher Livesay reports from Rome.
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The canonization ceremony took place under a broiling sun before a crowd of 120,000 in St. Peter’s Square, according to Vatican estimates. It will no doubt be hard to call her St. Teresa after calling her Mother Teresa for so many years. Shortly after her death, Pope John Paul recognized her for sainthood. “Someone I think that people knew as a real person, not someone who lived 500 years ago or 2,000 years ago, but someone who lived in our own time”. In their lifetime, the two appeared frequently together, sharing a passion for traditional church values and a disdain for abortion.
Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
The church’s parishioners try to embody the values that Saint Teresa held closely.
“The church was full, the galleries were full, there were thousands of people on the streets outside”, said Monsignor Stephen Churchwell, who was pastor at Sacred Heart back in 1995 when Mother Teresa visited.
As if to emphasise the point, Pope Francis repeated the line “the crimes of poverty they themselves created”. “She gave all the employees a little medallion, and we have ours hanging on the wall here”, said McKinstry. Questions were raised of her connections with certain high profile people including dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and British publisher, Robert Maxwell, who embezzled £450 million from his employees’ pension pot. You’ll walk again, but you need to embrace your suffering.
As well as children from St Marks, youngsters from other Catholic schools travelled to St Mark’s to meet her and present her with gifts they had collected.
“They traveled all night by bus to participate first in the canonization and then in the lunch”, said Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, the Pope’s almoner. Robert Mickens is a veteran Vatican analyst.
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, Aug 26, 1910, to an ethnic Albanian family, made Kolkata her home and workplace for 68 years since 1929.
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Mother Theresa’s writings were also problematic for her entry into sainthood, with entries apparently suggesting a wavering faith in God. But they do what they do out of craziness for God.
