Mother Teresa, the nun whose work for India’s poor people has gained global acclaim, has been officially declared a saint by the Catholic Church, in a canonization mass attended by throngs of Catholic pilgrims in Vatican City Sunday morning.
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Nevertheless, those on hand were jubilant to have made the journey – nuns, priests, volunteers, pilgrims and tourists clutching the coveted 100,000 tickets issued for the Mass.
Mother Teresa is the third saint to be canonized by Pope Francis this year.
Pope Francis responded: “We declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint and we enrol her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church”.
While Francis is clearly keen to hold Mother Teresa up as a model for her joyful dedication to the poor, he is also recognizing holiness in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony sensing that God had abandoned her. As if to emphasize the point, Francis repeated the “the crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
September 4: Rejoicing over the canonization of Mother Teresa, her followers on Sunday expressed hope that it would bring an era of peace, cooperation and sympathy in the world.
Read the homily from the canonization Mass here: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-francis-st. -teresa-of-calcutta-was-a-generous-dispenser-of-gods-mercy.
Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was a tiny Albanian woman born an Ottoman citizen in 1910, in Skopje. She came to Kolkata after listening to the “call within call” and established missionaries of charity there in 1950, he added.
Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity Sisters attended the event, along with several heads of state or government.
The Nobel Peace Prize victor, who died in 1997 and was famed for her work with the poor in India – but fiercely criticized by some – was praised by Francis as a “generous dispenser of divine mercy”. The other reportedly healed multiple brain tumors in a man after his family prayed to Mother Teresa.
The homeless, most of who live in shelters run by Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity order, came to Rome overnight on buses from across Italy to take part in Sunday’s Mass.
To become a saint, the Vatican looks for evidence of two miracles and they require an exhaustive investigation to prove it. “Mother Teresa was in India”.
Critics say she did little to alleviate the pain of the terminally ill and nothing to tackle the root causes of poverty.
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“I hear people complain about Mother Teresa, that she didn’t give enough care and didn’t do enough”.
