Hundreds of thousands of people gathered today in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to celebrate the canonization of Saint Teresa of Kolkata, as she will now be known.
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And then Francis recognized a second miracle attributed to her, claiming a man in Brazil stricken with multiple brain tumors was unexpectedly cured after family members payed to Mother Teresa.
Pope Francis as he leaves after a Holy Mass and the canonisation of Mother Teresa of Kolkata, in Saint Peter’s square at the Vatican, on September 4, 2016.
“Mother Teresa belong to Kolkata and she has been declared a saint”. As if to emphasize the point, Francis repeated the “the crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
Mother Teresa died in 1997 at the age of 87 after spending most of her life working in Calcutta – now Kolkota – in India.
Mother Teresa was born in Skopje, which was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, later Yugoslavia, and now Albania, in 1910. About 1,500 homeless people and 13 heads of state and even royalty witnessed the canonization. The guests were the poor and needy, especially from the houses of the Sisters of Mother Teresa.
“She had just got that call that she must serve God”, Chawla told CNN News18.
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. There is an aptness to Saint Teresa being canonised now: she was the very embodiment of the spirit of compassion for fellow humans, caring for the terminally ill with a devotion that is hard to achieve for most people. In Mother Teresa’s case, it lasted for nearly 50 years – an almost unheard of trial. “This only adds to the joy of everyone who admired her persona and the lesson in love and compassion she taught us”.
Following the Mass, Gomez blessed and opened a chapel dedicated to Mother Teresa, where photographs and stories of her visits to Los Angeles will be displayed, as well as the relic, pieces of her hair in the form of a cross, for public veneration.
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Standing under a canvas hung from St. Peter’s Basilica showing the late nun in her blue-hemmed white robes, Francis said Mother Teresa was a “dispenser of divine mercy”.
