The elevation to sainthood of Mother Teresa is following her lead in caring for the poor. In Mother Teresa’s case, an Indian woman with a stomach tumor and a Brazilian man with a brain infection both say they were healed after prayers to the nun.
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Mother Teresa worked with the poor in Kolkata for almost four decades, having initially come to eastern India as a missionary teacher with Ireland’s Loreto order.
“Her heart, she gave it to the world”, said Charlotte Samba, a 52-year-old mother of three who travelled with a church group from Gabon for the Mass. “Mercy, forgiveness, good works: It is the heart of a mother for the poor”. We may have some difficulty in calling her Saint Teresa, the pontiff said.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta at a pro-life meeting on July 13, 1986 in Bonn, Germany.
They were brought to the Vatican by bus from across Italy, to be present for Sunday’s canonisation mass, where they were given seats of honour. And for many of those gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, the canonization was nothing short of a formality, because they already considered her a saint.
Speaking of Teresa, the Pope noted how she “bowed down before those who were spent … seeing in them their God-given dignity”.
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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. When she was alive, she came in India in 1929 as a sister of the Loreto order. Hundreds of nuns hailing from Missionaries of Charity religious order Mother Teresa had founded in 1950 also witnessed the canonization. Today, there are 4,500 sisters of mercy.
A Nobel peace laureate, her legacy complements Pope Francis’s vision of a humble church that strives to serve the poor.
Mother Teresa’s “humble works of love, done for people who were abandoned and forsaken in a remote city in India, became a sign for the whole world of God’s tender and merciful love”, Gomez wrote.
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Prem Kaliea remembers meeting Mother Teresa and how his town welcomed her.
