The usual evening mass at the St Joseph Cathedral ended with a hymn based on Mother Teresa on Sunday. Thousands gathered for the canonization ceremony while the Pope declared Mother Teresa a saint who would now be called Saint Teresa of Kolkata.
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Mother Teresa in 1979 received a Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.
The Pope said St Teresa had defended the unborn, sick and abandoned, and had shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created”. The guests came from shelters run by the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa, in the cities of Milan, Bologna, Florence and Naples.
The church will also adopt the most recent spelling of the city, Kolkata making the official new name, “Saint Teresa of Kolkata”.
“She had that handsome saying, ‘God doesn’t want us to be ideal, he only wants us to be faithful.’ And she was faithful even in times of trial”, Dolan said.
Pope Francis today proclaimed Mother Teresa of Kolkata a saint, hailing her as the personification of maternal love and a powerful advocate for the poor.
She joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland at age 17 and was sent to Calcutta, where she taught at a high school.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 to Albanian parents, in modern-day Macedonia.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Church has now been renamed again, to Saint Teresa of Calcutta Church. Setting up the Missionaries of Charity order, she chose to devote her entire life to the depriving masses.
Writer and Calcuttan Ruchir Joshi says it’s not conversions that bother him but Mother Teresa’s failure to use her indisputable clout to go beyond what he calls a self-serving cycle. “Mother is a great saint, a very great saint, but she always said it is God who is working through me”. The ceremony, known as a canonization, drew an emotional crowd of nuns and pedestrians alike from around the world.
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“I hope someday I will be like her”, said one person in attendance.
