Pope Francis on Sunday declared Nobel Peace Prize victor Mother Teresa, revered for her work among the poor in India, a Saint of the Catholic Church.
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Pope Francis made things official in front of 120,000 people in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, canonizing the incredible woman as Saint Teresa of Kolkata, as she will now be known.
A day after Mother Teresa was officially declared “Saint Teresa” by Pope Francis at a ceremony at Vatican City, Vice President Hamid Ansari on Monday hailed her canonisation.
Two miraculous cures of the sick after Mother Teresa’s death in 1997 have been attributed to her intercession.
Kolkata: Not known to express their emotion in public, nuns of the Missionaries of Charity on Sunday cheered loudly, clapped freely and rang bells the moment Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint.
Thousands of fans gathered in the Vatican on September 4 to hear Pope Francis’ speech, in which he stated, “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint”. In Miami, a packed church celebrates Saint Teresa of Calcutta. After the canonization service, nuns from Mother Teresa’s order served pizza to 1,500 homeless people who were bussed in from across Italy.
Some say the church expedited her sainthood because of her fame and reputation.
“Her talk really reached all of us to see the great things that this small woman has accomplished”, Elaine Lucious of Bloomsburg said.
Having stayed away from television (TV) sets all their life, hundreds of nuns of the Missionaries of Charity made an exception on Sunday when they were glued to screens beaming Mother Teresa’s canonisation ceremony live.
Mother Teresa, a Nobel Peace Prize victor, was known during her lifetime as the “saint of the gutters” for her work among the poorest of the poor in India, arriving in Calcutta on January 6, 1929.
“I hear people complain about Mother Teresa, that she didn’t give enough care and didn’t do enough”.
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Mother Theresa, who was originally named Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was born to Albanian parents in 1910, in the former Ottoman Empire (now Macedonia).
