The pilgrims who arrived for canonization from all corner of the world erupted in sustained applause in St Peter s Square at the Vatican the moment Pope Francis proclaimed her St. Teresa of Kolkata.
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Among those those celebrating the canonization were “1,500 people from shelters run by the Italian branches of Saint Teresa’s order”, all of whom acted as Pope Francis’s guests for the pizza lunch, which was served by local nuns and priests.
The pontiff also said the new saint “made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime – the crimes! – of poverty they created”. Teresa, who was canonized largely because of her work with the poor, surely would have appreciated the gesture. St. Teresa dedicated her life to care for the poorest of the poor and founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950, which brought about a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. According to the Vatican Insider, three wood-fired ovens were set up outside to churn out Neapolitan pizza.
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 St. John Paul II. Many of those security measures have been in place for the duration of the Jubilee year, which officially ends in November.
For the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded Teresa’s saint-making campaign, the revelations were further confirmation of Mother Teresa’s heroic saintliness. I know for sure that she lived a like a saint.
Like every human being, the cardinal said, the unborn have one basic mission in life: “to love and be loved, as Mother Teresa liked to say”. The chief minister paid homage to her and recalled that she “chose India as her home, to serve the poor and the afflicted”. In 1998, exactly a year after Mother Teresa’s death, Monica claims to have been miraculously cured whilst praying to an image of the nun.
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Francis has confessed that he was somewhat intimidated by Teresa, knowing well she was as tough as she was tender.
