Pope Francis has declared Mother Teresa a saint, honoring the tiny nun who cared for the world’s most destitute as an icon for a Catholic Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor, wounded souls.
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Tens of thousands of pilgrims flocked into St Peter’s square on Sunday to hear Pope Francis proclaim Mother Teresa a saint. For Mother Teresa, mercy was the “salt” which gave flavour to her work, it was the “light” which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering.
Mother Teresa, who spent part of her life helping the poor in the Indian city of Calcutta, was born in 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia to an Albanian family from Kosovo. Those present followed the live television coverage of Mother Teresa’s canonization Mass in Rome’s St Peter’s Square.
Ceremonies around the world were expected to take place to recognize Mother Teresa’s sainthood.
That goodness was not just for Christians, said Sister Damascene, but anyone she could help.
Her visit came for the dedication of the Gift of Grace House, An HIV/AIDS hospice for indigent women.
“In India, the people say she’s “the living saint”.
For her work in the shanty towns and slumps, she was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1979.
Like prophets and saints before her, Mother Teresa would not “kneel down before anyone but the Almighty” and would not bow before “the fashions or idols of the moment”, said Cardinal Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.
Hundreds of people arrived at Mother House, Kolkata, to pay homage and witness live Pope Francis declaring Mother Teresa a saint, on Sunday.
St. Teresa of Calcutta visited Denver twice in the late 1980s and announced she would send nuns to Colorado from the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded.
The report in the Catholic diocesan newsletter said: “A number of children present her with gifts they had made and collected”.
“We are blessed with this canonization because we know mother is in heaven and she will pray for us and she will bless us”, said Sister Laisa, assistant superior general of the MoC.
Back in Manhattan, the Archdiocese will officially celebrate Mother Teresa’s canonization with a special mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. “Saint Teresa had a message of giving up wealth”, said Joe Maurski with the Knights of Columbus.
But she was also regarded with scorn by secular critics who accused her of being more concerned with evangelism than with improving the lot of the poor. The maternal tenderness Teresa brought to her mission to serve society’s outcasts simply made the word “mother” too fitting.
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She claimed to never refuse a helpless child but did as a rule, while those who died in her home for the dying were treated harshly and often died a miserable, painful death.
