“We are more blessed for these lives who lived amongst us and served the people”, Mr. Dayal said.
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Pope Francis on Sunday officially declared Mother Teresa of Calcutta a saint of the Catholic Church in front of thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square – a move the entire world has been waiting for.
“Those who criticise Mother Teresa, do they know what is the reality of our streets?”
She said that “born in Skopje, she will be an inspiration for me and many other generations that will come”.
Honsen Lyngdoh, a well-known philanthropist in Meghalaya, recalled his meeting with Mother Teresa, 30 years ago at Calcutta airport, and her advice, while Ashok Goenka, who recalled her visit here in the mid-1970s at the invitation of his father Radhey Shyam Goenka on behalf of The Rotary Club of Shillong, said that she was a messiah for the poor and destitute.
Lanong, a former journalist turned politician, who had interviewed Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity worldwide headquarters, known as Mother House, Calcutta in 1976 said: “Mother was adorned a living saint and today the Pope has proclaimed as a saint Teresa of Calcutta for her tireless work to help us understand us about gratuitous love to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race or religion”.
“I have a lot of admiration for Mother Teresa but I think everyone should be welcome here”, Tarcone said.
“She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity”, Francis said.
While Francis is clearly keen to hold Teresa up as a model for her joyful dedication to the poor, he was also recognizing holiness in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony, sensing that God had abandoned her.
“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.
A small group of Mother Teresa’s critics were on the edge of St. Peter’s Square handing out literature reading in part that the church “discredited itself” by honoring a “fraud” like Mother Teresa.
Flags from dozens of countries – including many from India and Albania – were on display, and when Francis declared the woman already known as “the saint of the gutters” an official saint, a roar of applause and cheers rattled across St. Peter’s Square.
In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity, which went onto become a global order of nuns – identified by their trademark blue-trimmed saris, as well as priests, brothers and lay co-workers.
“We enroll her among the Saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church”.
Pope Francis is following in the footsteps of Mother Teresa by offering some 1,500 homeless people a pizza lunch at the Vatican after her canonization Mass. They’re getting seats of honor for the celebration and will then be served lunch in the lobby of the Vatican auditorium.
For the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded Mother Teresa’s saint-making campaign, the revelations were further confirmation of Mother Teresa’s heroic saintliness. For Francis, Mother Teresa put into action his ideal for the church to be a merciful “field hospital” for the poorest of the poor ” both materially and spiritually.
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Throughout the night, pilgrims prayed at vigils in area churches and flocked before dawn to the Vatican under heavy security to try to get a good spot for the Mass that was expected to draw more than 100,000 people.
