Francis has been dedicated to ministering to society’s most marginal – prostitutes, prisoners, refugees and the homeless.
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Singing nuns and followers clutching flowers flocked to Mother Teresa’s tomb in the Indian city of Kolkata to celebrate her proclamation as a saint at the Vatican later Sunday.
“A humble woman managed to unite all mankind without any discrimination, based only on the power of faith and love”, she said.
Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity went on to become a global order of nuns, priests, brothers and lay co-workers.
By historical standards, Teresa has been fast-tracked to sainthood.
While her sainthood wasn’t the sole focus of this mass, Mother Teresa was definitely a hot topic of discussion.
The ceremony came on the eve of the 19th anniversary of Saint Teresa’s death in Kolkata, where she spent almost four decades working in wretched slums.
“There were people there from everywhere in the world, Australia, Europe, United States, and we were working in the orphanage helping to feed the children, changing diapers, there must have been 300 kids in this orphanage”, Schaefer said.
Her monumental work was far beyond the imagination of the world which just couldn’t understand the enormity of its selflessness. Francis chose to emphasize her other dealings with the powerful. People of India are proud of the recognition being accorded to Mother Teresa for her service to humanity and God through this canonisation. The city has long fostered some of India’s most important writers, artists and intellectuals, including filmmaker Satyajit Ray and the Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore.
It was in the latter role, at the head of her now worldwide order, that Saint Teresa became one of the most famous women on the planet.
Both Sacred Heart churches honored Mother Teresa’s canonization on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.
She tweeted: “I am honoured to have been invited as an ambassador to Kosovo, to sing at the canonization of Mother Theresa”. “One is Mother Teresa, I met her just after my ordination to the priesthood in 1994”.
“It was a city where she lived, but it was not Mother Teresa’s city”.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity and the group will host a Mass of Thanksgiving for the newly-named saint Monday at the Cathedral of Christ the King beginning around noon.
“I talked to her personally a couple of times”, he said.
In 2003 she was beatified as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta by John Paul II and now comes the canonisation.
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It will no doubt be hard to call her St. Teresa after calling her Mother Teresa for so many years.
