In honor of the new saint’s lifelong mission, organizers bused in 1,500 homeless people to her canonization Mass.
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Sunday morning was quite the historic and emotional moment in the Catholic community as Mother Teresa joined the ranks of other saints, declared by Pope Francis.
According to a September 4 communique from the Vatican, the guests are “are poor and needy people, above all from the dormitories of the Sisters of Mother Teresa and come from all over Italy”, including Milan, Bologna, Florence, Naples and from all the houses in Rome.
After a brief description of her work was read by Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Pope canonised Mother Teresa in the name of the Church. After contracting tuberculosis, she was sent to rest in Darjeeling, and it was on the way that she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and live among the poor.
Pope Francis then delivered a homily, in which he praised Mother Teresa – “this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life” – for her charitable work.
“Mother Teresa, throughout her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy”, Frandis said.
“She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognise their guilt for the crime – the crimes – of poverty they created”, he added. “And the people that bought it returned it to them, and they sold it again”.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 to Albanian parents, in modern-day Macedonia. She dedicated her life helping the poor.
She arrived in India in 1929 as a sister of the Loreto order, and in 1946 she received what she described as a “call within a call”.
Today the order has 4,500 members and runs homes for the homeless in 133 countries.
Applause broke out from the tens of thousands in attendance even before Pope Francis finished the canonization at the start of Mass.
What are your thoughts on Mother Teresa becoming a saint?
“I saw a spark of light emerge from mother’s photo and reflect on my tumor”, says Monica Besra, cured by Mother Teresa.
Rita later took to social media to express her delight at being invited, and revealed that she acted as the ambassador for Kosovo – the very place where Mother Teresa spent her childhood.
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She came to St. Paul in 1982, after the Catholic diocese and local service groups raised an impressive sum for her charity. But to her followers, such criticism means little. I’m thinking if I could do a fraction of the kindness and the goodness and the mercy that mother tries to show …
