“As much as we see the image of God in the poor, by acting in love, we are the image of God for the poor”, Troia said. She had been living in Yemen for years, where five of Mother Teresa’s nuns, with the help of other volunteers, took care of around 80 sick and disabled people.
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Mother Teresa, the nun who devoted her life to the impoverished and one of the Catholic Church’s most iconic figures, was canonized as a saint on Sunday. “She took utmost care and spent the valuable medicines for them and told them that God loves them all without any discrimination”, he added.
“She made her voice heard before the powers of the world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crimes of poverty they themselves created”, he declared in a homily.
English literature teacher Madhura Banerjee described her as an inspiration to the younger generation in today’s modern world.
While big, the crowd attending the canonization wasn’t even half of the 300,000 who turned out for Mother Teresa’s 2003 beatification celebrated by an ailing John Paul.
It was in the latter role, at the head of her now worldwide order, that Teresa became one of the most famous women on the planet.
The church’s parishioners try to embody the values that Saint Teresa held closely. In Mother Teresa’s case, an Indian woman with a stomach tumor and a Brazilian man with a brain infection both say they were healed after prayers to the nun. “So I went down and picked up Mother Teresa, and she looked at me and said Father, can I have your blessing?”
By the time she was 12, according to biographers, Agnes was already a regular visitor to Catholic shrines and knew that she wanted to dedicate her life to missionary work.
Mother Teresa’s devotees began pressing the Vatican soon after her death to speed up the nun’s sainthood cause, saying her holiness was clear to many around the world.
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Mother Teresa set up her Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Kolkata in 1950 and made her headquarters in the Indian city for almost half a century.
She died in 1997 and was put on a fast-track for sainthood soon thereafter.
Her canonization is significant not only because it took place during the Jubilee of Mercy, but also because it fell during a special September 2-4 jubilee celebration for workers and volunteers of mercy, of whom Mother Teresa is widely considered one of the greatest of our time.
Mother Teresa was born in 1910 to ethnic Albanian parents.
The pope waived the waiting period in part, some believe, because of her fame and reputation.
She also went after the political leaders that allowed poverty, he said.
For Mother Teresa, her good deeds have been recognized for her years of service as founder of the Missionaries of Charity sisterhood.
Nuns from Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity are active in the Ugandan capital.
In this November 16, 1996 file photo, Mother Teresa holds the resolutions of honorary American citizenship after they were presented to her by American Ambassador to India Frank G. Wisner at the Missionaries of Charity in KolKata, formerly known as Calcutta, India.
1952: Opens Nirmal Hriday (“Pure Heart”), a home for the dying, followed next year by her first orphanage. These are not Mother Teresa’s words but those of India’s most illustrious poet, Rabindranath Tagore.
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To those who said her Order should promote development, she replied that she was a missionary, not a social worker.
