Pope Francis has declared Mother Teresa a saint, honoring the nun who cared for the world\u2019s most destitute as an icon for a Catholic Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor and wounded souls.
\nApplause erupted in St Peter\u2019s Square even before Francis finished pronouncing the rite of canonization at the start of the Mass in St Peter\u2019s Square.
\nIn his homily, Pope Francis praised Mother Teresa as the merciful saint who defended the lives of the unborn, sick and abandoned \u2014 and who shamed world leaders for the \u201ccrimes of poverty they themselves created.\u201d
\nPope Francis held Mother Teresa up as a model for today\u2019s Christians during his homily for the nun who cared for the \u201cpoorest of the poor.\u201d
\nSpeaking from the steps of St Peter\u2019s Basilica, Francis said the saint spent her life \u201cbowing down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity.\u201d
\nHe added: \u201cShe made her voice heard before the powers of the world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crimes of poverty they themselves created.\u201d
\nAs if to emphasize the point, Francis repeated the \u201cthe crimes of poverty they themselves created.\u201d
\nIn an unscripted remark, the Pope said that for some it would be difficult to refer to her as \u201cSt Teresa\u201d and that she will still be referred to as \u201cMother Teresa\u201d by many people. \u201cWe\u2019ll keep on calling her Mother,\u201d he said.
\nTens of thousands of pilgrims filled the square for the canonization of Mother Teresa.
\nSome 100,000 tickets were issued for the Mass and the crowd included nuns, priests, volunteers, pilgrims and tourists.
\nHundreds of Missionaries of Charity Sisters in their trademark blue-trimmed saris had front-row seats at the Mass, while one group of 40 Indian nationals travelled from Macerata, Italy, to honor a woman given India\u2019s highest civilian and humanitarian awards for her work in the slums of Calcutta. Another group of 100 drove from Kosovo holding up a banner that read: \u201cMother Teresa: Pray for Us.\u201d
\nIn addition, 13 heads of state and government led official delegations while 1,500 homeless people invited by Pope Francis had VIP seats and were going to be treated by the Pope to a Neapolitan pizza lunch in the Vatican auditorium afterwards.
\nWhile Pope Francis is clearly keen to hold Mother Teresa up as a model for her joyful dedication to society\u2019s outcasts, he is also recognizing holiness in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony sensing that God had abandoned her.
\nAccording to correspondence that came to light after she died in 1997, Mother Teresa experienced what the Church calls a \u201cdark night of the soul\u201d \u2014 a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced. In Mother Teresa\u2019s case, it lasted for nearly 50 years.
\nFor Fr Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded Mother Teresa\u2019s saint-making campaign, the revelations were further confirmation of Mother Teresa\u2019s heroic saintliness. He said that by canonizing her, Francis has recognized that Mother Teresa not only shared the material poverty of the poor but the spiritual poverty of those who feel \u201cunloved, unwanted, uncared for.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat she described as the greatest poverty in the world today (of feeling unloved) she herself was living in relationship with Jesus,\u201d he said in an interview on the eve of the canonization.
\nFrancis has in many ways modelled his papacy on Mother Teresa\u2019s simple lifestyle and selfless service to the poor: He eschewed the Apostolic Palace for a hotel room, he has made welcoming migrants and the poor a hallmark and has fiercely denounced today\u2019s \u201cthrowaway\u201d culture that discards the unborn, the sick and the elderly with ease.
\nSunday\u2019s festivities honoring Mother Teresa weren\u2019t limited to Rome: In Calcutta, where she spent a lifetime dedicated to the poor, a special Sunday Mass was held at the order\u2019s Mother House. Volunteers and admirers converged on Mother House to watch the canonization ceremony, which was being broadcast on giant TV screens in Calcutta and elsewhere.
\nSisters of Charity volunteers planned to distribute food to the poor nearby after the ceremony, and community meals were being served across Catholic parishes in India on Sunday \u2014 a symbolic reference to Mother Teresa\u2019s lifetime of service to humanity, said Fr Savarimuthu Sankar of the archdiocese of New Delhi.
\n\u201cLet the example of Mother Teresa inspire all of us to dedicate ourselves to the welfare of mankind,\u201d said Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.
\nCeremonies were also expected in Skopje, Macedonia, where Mother Teresa was born, and also in Albania and Kosovo, where people of her same ethnic Albanian background live.
\nBorn Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, Mother Teresa came to India in 1929 as a sister of the Loreto order. In 1946, she received what she described as a \u201ccall within a call\u201d to found a new order dedicated to caring for the most unloved and unwanted, the \u201cpoorest of the poor.\u201d
\nIn 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity, which went onto become a global order of nuns \u2014 identified by their trademark blue-trimmed saris \u2014 as well as priests, brothers and lay co-workers.
\nShe was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
\nShe died in 1997 after a lifetime spent caring for hundreds of thousands of destitute and homeless poor in Calcutta, for which she came to be called the \u201csaint of the gutters.\u201d
\nSt John Paul II, her most ardent supporter, fast-tracked her for sainthood and beatified her before a crowd of 300,000 in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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