Vatican City: Pope Francis on Sunday declared Nobel Peace Prize victor Mother Teresa, revered for her work among the poor in India, a Saint of the Catholic Church.
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September 4: Expressing happiness after the canonisation of Mother Teresa as “saint” in Vatican City on Sunday, Father Francis Xavier said may Mother Teresa set an example to all to follow the path to love and help everyone without any discrimination.
Francis, who has declared 2016 as a Jubilee Year of Mercy, said he shared Mother Teresa’s ideal of a church as a kind of “field hospital” for the souls of the world’s poorest and most desperate.
Cardinal Angelo Amato, the head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, will read a brief biography of Mother Teresa and ask Pope Francis in the name of the church to canonize her.
He then repeated with emphasis, the “the crimes of poverty they themselves created”. Pope Francis made the official declaration during a canonization mass held at the Vatican, where thousands of fans gathered to praise the late nun for her enormous charity work. “She helped everyone, and she’s a spiritual leader – a good woman”, she said.
Those fears prompted a huge, 3,000-strong law enforcement presence to secure the area around the Vatican and close the airspace above.
As pilgrims from across the world gathered at the Vatican along with delegations from more than a dozen governments, the canonization was also celebrated in Skopje, the capital of modern Macedonia where Mother Teresa was born of Albanian parents in 1910 and became a nun aged 16.
“She had this great quote-It’s not my job to be successful, it’s my job to be faithful, which is what I try to keep in my heart and mind as I go about the daily work”, said Dr.
Snezana Hristrovska, 66 told The Associated Press that she brought her two young nephews to visit the memorial house and told them that is “proud to be Macedonian” today because of Teresa.
The debate over the nun’s legacy has continued after her death with researchers uncovering financial irregularities in the running of her order, the Missionaries of Charity, and evidence mounting of patient neglect, insalubrious conditions and questionable conversions of the vulnerable in her missions.
But the Catholic church’s obsession with elevating the life and work of Mother Teresa is exactly why her critics have come out with such vocal condemnations of her.
His book roundly condemned her, calling her a “religious fundamentalist, a political operative, a primitive sermonizer and an accomplice of worldly secular powers”. Ten years later she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Just how she helped everybody – she was so selfless”, Tracey Korczyk said.
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.
“Mother Teresa loved to say, ‘Perhaps I don’t speak their language, but I can smile.'” he said.
“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded”, he said.
In photos and posters, Mother Teresa is now depicted as a saint.
Though there has been some controversy surrounding her and all that she represents, this means an enormous amount to many, including the 30-year-old woman, Monica Besra, who claims to have been cured by praying to Saint Teresa.
In the eyes of some, particularly in India, she put fame and piety before her mission of aid.
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The canonization Mass will begin with hymns and proceed nearly immediately to the rite of canonization: the declaration that Mother Teresa is now a saint.
