– Pope Francis proclaimed Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, September 4 bestowing the Catholic Church’s highest honor on one of the most widely admired public figures in recent history, the Wall Street Journal reports. This comes as no surprise as the Pope, who prioritises the poor, was eager to make her a saint during the church’s present Holy Year. In addition, 13 heads of state and government led official delegations while 1,500 homeless people invited by Pope Francis had VIP seats and were going to be treated by the pope to a Neapolitan pizza lunch in the Vatican auditorium afterward.
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Rita Ora will “cherish” the moment she performed to celebrate Mother Teresa’s canonisation “forever”.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. The ceremony came a day before the 19th anniversary of Teresa’s death in Kolkata, the Indian city where she spent almost four decades tending to the poorest of the poor.
Pope Francis praised Mother Teresa’s defense of human life in his homily at her Mass of Canonization on Sunday.
“We were in the presence of saints and we still are in the presence of saints”, Wenski said. “She’s so recent, she was really showing how we can love in our world, in our day and age”.
As a young woman she felt called to minister to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta, India. Mother Teresa died just 19 years ago. 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.
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“Her mission to the urban and existential peripheries remains for us today an eloquent witness to God’s closeness to the poorest of the poor”, the pope said. Not only the sisters who are in contact but all kinds of religion – even the people who did not believe in God – when they come in contact with Mother, something happens to them because she’s so tender, so loving. He said it was an experience he will not soon forget also receiving a token from her.
