Yahoo – AFP, Angus Mackinnon, Catherine Marciano, September 4, 2016
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| Mother Teresa, who was declared a saint, spent all her adult life in India, first teaching, then tending to the dying poor (AFP Photo) |
Pope
Francis on Sunday proclaimed Mother Teresa a saint and hailed the revered
Catholic nun as an embodiment of maternal love who talked truth to power on
behalf of the poor.
"We
may have some difficulty in calling her 'Saint' Teresa," the pontiff said.
"Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful that we continue
to spontaneously call her Mother."
He added:
"She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they
might recognise their guilt for the crime -– the crimes! -– of poverty they
created."
Teresa's
canonisation mass was attended by more than 100,000 pilgrims, including heads
of state and hundreds of sari-clad nuns from her order, the Missionaries of
Charity.
Queen Sofia
of Spain and around 1,500 homeless people also looked on as Francis described
Teresa's work in the slums of Kolkata as "eloquent witness to God's
closeness to the poorest of the poor".
To
applause, he added: "Mother Teresa loved to say, 'perhaps I don't speak
their language but I can smile'. Let us carry her smile in our hearts."
Candles and
flowers were laid on Teresa's tomb at the headquarters of her order in the
Indian metropolis she is so closely associated with.
Lighting a
candle, Konica Cecilia said Teresa had given her impoverished parents money to
help them send her to school.
"I was
fortunate to meet Mother. She was a living saint and an inspiration to
me," the 32-year-old said. "My memories of her comfort me when I am
in trouble."
Francis
also used his sermon to recall Teresa's fervent opposition to abortion, which
she termed "murder by the mother" in a controversial Nobel Peace
prize speech in 1979.
She
"ceaselessly proclaimed that the unborn are the weakest", he said.
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Mother
Teresa's elevation to Roman Catholicism's celestial pantheon came in
a
canonisation mass in St Peter's square in the Vatican that was presided over
by
Pope Francis (AFP Photo/Andreas Solaro)
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Pizza
lunch at Vatican
With the
16th century basilica of St Peter's glinting in the late summer sun, Francis
led a ritual mass that has barely changed for centuries.
Speaking in
Latin, he declared "blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) to be a Saint...
decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church."
After the
mass, the 79-year-old pontiff boarded an open-topped jeep and toured around St
Peter's square and surrounding streets to a rapturous reception from tens of
thousands of well-wishers.
Solangel
Rojas had come from Cali in Colombia. Clutching a picture of Teresa to her
heart, she said: "It is wonderful that she has been canonised. She was an
example to us all."
Among those
in the front rows at the mass were 1,500 people from shelters run by the
Italian branches of Teresa's order. Later they were Francis's guests for a
giant pizza lunch served by nuns and priests.
Teresa
spent all her adult life in India, first teaching, then tending to the dying
poor for decades before her death in 1997.
It was in
the latter role, at the head of her now worldwide order, that Teresa became one
of the most famous women on the planet.
Born to
Kosovan Albanian parents in Skopje -- then part of the Ottoman empire, now the
capital of Macedonia -- she won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize and was revered
around the world as a beacon for the Christian values of self-sacrifice and
charity.
But she was
also regarded with scorn by secular critics who accused her of being more
concerned with evangelism than with improving the lot of the poor.
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Pope
Francis is greeted by nuns in St. Peter's Square on the occasion of a
jubilee
audience, at the Vatican, Thursday, June 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Gregorio
Borgia)
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Contested
legacy
The debate
over Teresa's legacy has continued after her death, with researchers uncovering
financial irregularities in the running of her order and evidence mounting of
patient neglect, insalubrious conditions and questionable conversions of the
vulnerable in her missions.
By
historical standards, Teresa has been fast-tracked to sainthood. John Paul II
was a personal friend and as the pope at the time of her death, he was
responsible for her being beatified in 2003.
Achieving
sainthood requires the Vatican to approve accounts of two miracles occurring as
a result of prayers for Teresa's intercession.
The first
one, ratified in 2002, was of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, who says she
recovered from ovarian cancer a year after Teresa's death -- something local
health officials have put down to medicine rather than prayer.
In the
second, approved last year, Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino says his wife's
prayers to Teresa led to brain tumours disappearing. Eight years later, Andrino
and his wife Fernanda were in the congregation on Sunday.
Also
presented was London-based Indian expatriate Abraham. "She practised
Christianity," he said. "The majority of Christians only spend their
time talking about it."
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