Churches across the world paid respect to Mother Teresa on Sunday after she was declared a saint in a canonization mass at the Vatican. It was nevertheless the highlight of Francis’ Holy Year of Mercy and possibly one of the defining moments of his mercy-focused papacy.
Advertisement
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. Mother Teresa set up her Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Kolkata, in 1950 and established her headquarters in the Indian city for almost half a century.
At this occasion, Sister Anna Maria Mendez said, “It’s so handsome, I was moved by Mother Teresa’s works, and moved by this ceremony”.
Mother Teresa’s canonization took just 19 years, considered extremely quick in matters of the Catholic Church.
Saint Teresa made an impact on people across the world including here in western MA.
Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Albania, at age 18, she joined an Irish convent, where she received the name Sister Mary Teresa. Speaking in Latin, he declared blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) to be a Saint. As if to emphasize the point, Francis repeated the “the crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
“We’ll look to this woman and be reminded that it’s all about the poor, her service, it’s all about God’s call to serve the poor, to serve the marginalized”, said Marcus Keyes.
She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
It is a day of rejoicing, a day of gratitude and a day of many, many blessings, senior sister Mary Lysa said.
The pope, on Sunday, celebrated the new saint in a way that would bring together both those who champion the church’s traditional moral teachings and those who lean more toward social justice concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Vatican had earlier approved accounts of two miracles occurred as a result of prayers for Teresa’s intercession. In 2002, a woman in India recovered from a tumor in the abdomen, in 2008 the Brazilian disappeared brain tumor.
Advertisement
Many of these saints were not elevated until centuries after their deaths; Mother Teresa died in 1997.
