“Her mission to the urban and existential peripheries remains for us today an eloquent witness to God’s closeness to the poorest of the poor”, the pope said.
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Pope Francis proclaimed Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, September 4 bestowing the Catholic Church’s highest honor on one of the most widely admired public figures in recent history, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“For me, nothing has changed”, said Giovanna Tommasi, lay member of the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order Mother Teresa founded in 1950.
In the homily given in the mass to canonize Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the saint of the poor as she is worldwide known, Pope Francis described her as a generous giver of divine mercy.
Still by declaring her a saint, the Vatican has ensured Mother Teresa will be remembered for generations to come. Speaking about Mother Teresa, the pope at Vatican, said: “She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity”. As if to emphasize the point, Francis repeated the “the crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint in highlight of his Holy Year of Mercy on Sunday during a canonization ceremony in front of tens of thousands of people at St. Peter’s Square. She died in Kolkata in 1997 at age 87.
In one of her most famous speeches, she told a room containing then-President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion”.
Saint Teresa now joins more than 10,000 saints in the Roman Catholic Church.
Saint Mother Teresa visited Baltimore two times.
Several flags fluttered over the ceremony: Albania, representing Mother Teresa’s ethnic origin; Macedonia, representing her birthplace; India, the place of most of her good works; and numerous other countries where her works touched many lives.
For the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded Mother Teresa’s saint-making campaign, the revelations were further confirmation of Mother Teresa’s heroic saintliness.
“I saw a spark of light emerge from mother’s photo and reflect on my tumor”, says Monica Besra, cured by Mother Teresa.
“Everything she did gave an example to the entire world”, said 17-year-old student Massimiliano D’Aniello, from Grosseto, Italy, adding he had made a musical about her with his friends. She later returned many times and the Missionaries of Charity now house the needy in 18 houses.
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The prime minister had praised the nun, who became a global icon because of her work with the dying and destitute of Kolkata, in that edition of his monthly-radio address.
