Her small figure in a white-and-blue sari and sandals became familiar around the world.
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He said that by canonizing her, Francis is recognizing that Mother Teresa not only shared the material poverty of the poor but the spiritual poverty of those who feel “unloved, unwanted, uncared for”. Some wept for joy. I had a very proud feeling of being Albanian. “I’m overwhelmed”, said Sumitra Elizabeth Mondal, 26, a teacher in tutoring center, who had burst into tears.
“If I’m going to be a saint, I’m going to be a saint of darkness, and I’ll be asking from heaven to be the light of those who are in darkness on Earth”, she once wrote.
“It’s not becoming a saint”. What we are called to do, therefore, Pope Francis said, is “to translate into concrete acts that which we invoke in prayer and profess in faith”.
They came with floral bouquets and placed them by a photo.
The church is also a children’s home set up by Mother Teresa. “She dedicated her life to loving others, so why not me, why not us?”
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.
1962: Wins her first prize for her humanitarian work: the Padma Shri award for “distinguished service”.
1979: Wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mother Teresa is a saint. Her critics say her charity isn’t financially accountable and volunteers aren’t properly trained. “But it wasn’t until I moved to the West that I realized she overshadowed everything else in people’s perception of Calcutta”, he said. After the meal, she and her mother waited to watch the ceremony.
Ceremonies were also expected in Skopje, Macedonia, where Mother Teresa was born, and also in Albania and Kosovo, where people of her same ethnic Albanian background live. Notably, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a global congregation that provides aid to the the poor, infirm and homeless.
After the Nobel Prize, her fame grew and she embraced an worldwide role traveling the world to speak against abortion and contraception. The order has also been accused of hoarding millions of dollars in donations given to it. “Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful that we continue to spontaneously call her Mother”. We serve Jesus in the poor. “This is a point many people do not understand”.
The elegant Kolkata artist Sunita Kumar knew the nun since 1967, when she met her while volunteering to make medicine packets for leprosy patients.
According to correspondence that came to light after she died in 1997, Mother Teresa experienced what the church calls a “dark night of the soul” – a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that numerous great mystics experienced.
“We may have some difficulty in calling her “Saint” Teresa”, the pontiff said. Her vehicle would be rushed by those seeking her blessings when she was at stoplights.
“I was dying”, she said.
The debate over Teresa’s legacy has continued after her death, with researchers uncovering financial irregularities in the running of her order and evidence mounting of patient neglect, insalubrious conditions and questionable conversions of the vulnerable in her missions. “Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer”.
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Inside, 13-year-old Joyti Bhuinya scooped water on a statue of the Virgin Mary as the school readied for its own program.
