Thousands of pilgrims thronged St. Peter’s Square for the canonisation of Mother Teresa, the tiny nun who cared for the world’s most unwanted and became the icon of a Catholic Church.
Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint at a Sunday morning Mass, making her the model of his Jubilee Year of Mercy and in some ways his entire papacy. For Pope Francis, Mother Teresa put into action his ideal for the church to be a merciful “field hospital” for the poorest of the poor both materially and spiritually.
As it happened:
3.47 pm: Ceremony concludes. Pope Francis leaves after offering prayers to those missionaries who died in service of the Catholic faith.
Even Pope Francis is finding it hard to call Mother Teresa “St. Teresa”.
Deviating from his homily on Sunday, Pope Francis acknowledged it’ll be hard for admirers to make the switch since Mother Teresa’s saintliness is “so close to us”.
As the crowd erupted in applause, he said: “So tender and rich that spontaneously we will continue to say Mother Teresa.”
3.41 pm: Pope Francis offers the Marian prayer of the Angelus, marking the end of the ceremony.
Pope concludes Mass and canonization with Angelus... - >https://t.co/KEpswK7vD8
— News.va English (@newsva_en) >September 4, 2016
3.40 pm: Who is Mother Teresa of Calcutta? Well Mother Teresa herself gave her identity: "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus." Read this interview to Vatican Radio.
An interview with Mother Teresa... - >https://t.co/Te9rx07JRC
— News.va English (@newsva_en) >September 2, 2016
3.35 pm:AFP reports: Mother Teresa could come across as an ascetic figure and as a strict task-mistress to those under her. "She spoke her mind," Pope Francis recalled in 2014. "I would have been a little bit scared had she been my Mother Superior."
But in his homily at her canonisation mass, Pope Francis hailed her as beacon for the world. She was, he said, "an eloquent witness to God's closeness to the poorest of the poor."
Those who knew her best describe someone who loved fun, chocolate and icecream.
Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, a member of her Order who promoted her sainthood cause within the Vatican, told AFP that Mother Teresa would often be found bent over in laughter while discussing the day's events with fellow nuns.
"You felt that she was a mother," he said. "She was not very good at telling jokes but she had a sense of humour and could really find the funny aspects in ... daily life."
3.26 pm: During his homily, Pope Francis 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 defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded.”
To the many volunteers in Rome for the Jubilee for Volunteers and Workers of Mercy, Pope Francis offered St. Teresa of Calcutta as a “model of holiness”.
Homily for the Canonization of Mother Teresa: Full text... - >https://t.co/o7GciA2xeq
— News.va English (@newsva_en) >September 4, 2016
3.21 pm: Even as the solemn canonisation ceremony is underway in Vatican City, members of the Darjeeling branch of the Lay Missionaries of Charity (LMC) took an 8-km ride on the iconic Darjeeling toy train to retrace the trip Mother Teresa took on September 10, 1946. During the journey to Darjeeling in the toy train, the Mother received the “call within the call” within her soul and the course of her life was decided, Father Peter Lingdam, LMC’s Darjeeling Branch Director said.
“We wished to experience what Mother Teresa must have felt during that time of September 10, 1946 when she got the ’call within the call’ during her trip from the plains (NJP—Siliguri) to Darjeeling and her life’s course changed forever,” Father Lingdam said.
LMC is an International Association of ‘lay persons’ (married and single) adhering to the Spirit of the Missionaries of Charity.
3.07 pm: Pope Francis praises Mother Teresa as the merciful saint who defended the lives of the unborn, sick and abandoned and who shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
The Pope holds St. Teresa up as a model for today’s Christians during his homily for the nun who cared for the “poorest of the poor”. Speaking from the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis said St. Teresa spent her life “bowing down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their god-given dignity.”
3.04 pm: Pope Francis blesses the relics of the Mother. Pope Francis is also serving a pizza lunch in the spirit of Mother Teresa. Neapolitan pizza will be offered to 1,500 people in the atrium of the Paul VI Hall following the canonisation ceremony.
3.01 pm: Prayers being offered in different languages.
2.40 pm: Pope Francis addresses the faithful after declaring Mother Teresa a saint. For the Pope, Mother Teresa put into action his ideal of the church as a merciful “field hospital” for the poorest of the poor, those suffering both material and spiritual poverty. By canonising her during his Jubilee Year of Mercy, he in some ways is making her the icon of his entire pontificate.
Let us imitate Mother Teresa who made works of mercy the guide of her life and the path towards holiness.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) >September 3, 2016
2.10 pm: Thousands celebrate as Pope pronounces Mother Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
2.00 pm: Pope Francis offers a prayer to the almight before people starts reciting Litany of the Saints.
1.55 pm: Mass prayer begins at the Vatican City.
1:30 pm: People gather at Mother Teresa's House in Kolkata for a special mass for the "Saint of the Gutters". Singing nuns and followers clutching flowers are seen visiting Mother Teresa's tomb in Kolkata.
Mogalrajapuram, in vijayawada
1.00 pm: Special prayers are being held at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata.
“After the prayers, another event by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation will be held in the lane of Mother House, followed by a thanksgiving at Mother House after the canonisation,” spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity Sunita Kumar said.
12.45 pm: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is already in Rome on an official invitation from the Missionaries of Charity to participate in the event on Sunday.
12.30 pm: Congress President Sonia Gandhi today hailed the canonisation. She said, "her saintly life will forever inspire humanity to commit to the cause of those who have no voice, no community, no home, no care and no love.”
12.00 pm: India Post will issue a postage stamp on Mother Teresa today.
*****
> Read more: The saint-making process
The saint-making process has long been criticised as being expensive, secretive, ripe for abuses and subject to political, financial or theological winds that can push one candidate to sainthood in record time and leave another languishing for centuries.
For the record, the postulator of Mother Teresa’s cause says her case, which stretched over 20 years, cost less than $112,000.
Pope Francis has raised eyebrows with some rule-breaking beatifications and canonisations, waiving the need for miracles and canonising more people in a single clip more than 800 15th century martyrs than John Paul did in his 26-year pontificate (482).
Pope Francis has also imposed new financial accountability standards on the multimillion-dollar machine after uncovering gross abuses that were subsequently revealed in two books. The books estimated the average cost for each beatification at around $550,000, with much of the proceeds going to a few lucky people with contracts to do the time-consuming investigations into the candidates’ lives.
> Read more: The young woman from Skopje, by Navin Chawla
She was 18 when she was convinced that her life’s vocation lay in her becoming a missionary in far-off India; Skopje, where she was born on August 26, 1910, was so far removed from Bengal that, barring a few Yugoslav Jesuits who fired her young imagination, no one in the small Catholic community would even have known where India lay. Yet the early seeds of her faith and determination impelled her to leave her closely knit family.
She had a clear vision of the street and a determination that she often tempered with a sense of humour.
In the end, she gently but unmistakably left her imprint at the heart of the Vatican itself. Finding in Pope John Paul II a kindred spirit, she cajoled him into opening a small soup kitchen around the corner from the Great Basilica of St. Peter’s where the grand ceremony will be held to declare her a Saint. At four every evening, Rome’s homeless and hungry queue up to be fed by Mother Teresa’s Sisters and a dozen volunteers. At a stroke this frail nun, indisputably the world’s most decorated person, helped to demystify the Vatican’s centuries-old aura of wealth and power.
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