Vatican City: Mother Teresa, the nun whose work with the dying and destitute of Kolkata made her a global icon of Christian charity, was made a saint on Sunday.
Her 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 in the presence of 100,000 pilgrims.
“For the honour of the Blessed Trinity… we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) to be a Saint and we enroll her among the Saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church,” the pontiff said in Latin.
The ceremony came a day before the 19th anniversary of Teresa´s death in Kolkata, the Indian city where she spent nearly four decades tending to the poorest of the poor.
With the 16th century basilica of St Peter´s and an azure sky providing the backdrop, the faithful basked in the late summer sun as Francis presided over a ritual mass that has barely changed for centuries.
Such was the demand from pilgrims, the Vatican could easily have issued double the number of tickets but for space and security restrictions. Helicopters had earlier buzzed over the headquarters of the Roman Catholic church, testifying to the huge but relatively discreet security operation under way.
Some 3,000 officers were on duty to ensure the day passed off peacefully.
Among the assembled crowd were some 1,500 poor people looked after by the Italian branches of Teresa´s order, the Missionaries of Charity.
After the mass they were to be Francis´s guests at the Vatican for a giant pizza lunch served by 250 sisters and 50 male members of the order.
Teresa spent all her adult life in India, first teaching, then tending to the dying poor. 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.
Sceptics were absent from the Vatican Sunday however as Francis prepared to pay homage to a woman he sees as the embodiment of his vision of a “poor church for the poor”.
By historical standards, Teresa has been fast-tracked to sainthood, thanks largely to one of the few people to have achieved canonisation faster, John Paul II. (AFP)
