A canonization celebration for Mother Teresa serves multiple purposes as parishioners gathered Monday night.
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Meanwhile, people thronged various churches in the national Capital to celebrate the sainthood of the revered Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded.
Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, honoring the tiny nun who cared for the world’s most destitute and holding her up as a model for a Catholic Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor, wounded souls.
“For Mother Teresa, mercy was the salt which gave flavor 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”.
John Dayal, Secretary General of All India Christian Council, said Mother’s sainthood is another honour for the land of Mahatma Gandhi.
Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, Mother Teresa came to India in 1929 as a sister of the Loreto order.
Former Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, who wrote Mother Teresa’s biography, said Mother’s work was great and any criticism of her was irrelevant.
However, the crowds were not as large as the 300,000 who turned out for the new saint’s beatification in 2003. Those fears prompted a huge, 3,000-strong law enforcement presence to secure the area around the Vatican and close the airspace above. In Teresa’s case, it lasted for nearly 50 years – an almost unheard of trial.
“The poor whom she loved are also ours”, it said in another tweet.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) in a tweet said: “We pray for Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother”.
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She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, praising the nun for having taken in society’s most unwanted and for having shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
