“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. Later, nuns served them a pizza lunch.
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In a unifying gesture, the pope highlighted aspects of the new saint’s legacy appealing to opposite sides of a fractious divide: Catholics who champion traditional moral teachings and those focused on economic justice.
Her defenders have, of course, pushed back against the critics for years, saying they need to live their lives like Mother Teresa before criticizing her work.
And Mother Teresa captured the essence of motherhood, because she loved even the most
unlovable. She was “a generous dispenser of divine mercy”.
“Never realized something like that could happen and you know it was years later that you know it really impacted how great of a woman she was of a woman worldwide”, said McKinstry.
“Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer”, Francis said in his homily. Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters in their trademark blue-trimmed saris had front-row seats at the Mass alongside 1,500 homeless people and 13 heads of state or government, including Queen Sofia of Spain.
Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity – the order founded by the Mother to minister to the poorest of the poor and the infirm – and Roman catholic priests lit candles and held an early morning mass before her tomb in the congregation’s headquarters Mother House.
After doing iconic work in the slums of Calcutta (now Kolkata) that won universal acclaim, she died in 1997 at the age of 87.
St. John Paul II, her most ardent supporter, fast-tracked her for sainthood and beatified her before a crowd of 300,000 in 2003.
The ceremony came nearly 19 years after Teresa’s death in Kolkata, the Indian city where she spent nearly 40 years tending to the poorest of the poor.
A few months after she joined the convent, she left for India, landing in Kolkata, where she taught at St. Mary’s School for girls.
After contracting tuberculosis, she was sent to rest in Darjeeling.
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Sister Fatima recalls her time being guided by Mother Teresa in Calcutta.
