VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, praising the tiny nun for having taken in society’s most unwanted and for having shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created.”
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, praising the tiny nun for having taken in society’s most unwanted and for having shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created.”
Francis held up Mother Teresa as the model for a Catholic Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor, wounded souls during a canonization Mass that drew an estimated 120,000 people to a sun-filled St. Peter’s Square.
“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.
The canonization was the highlight of Francis’ Holy Year of Mercy and may come to define his papacy, which has been dedicated to ministering to society’s most marginal, from prisoners to prostitutes, the refugees and the homeless.
Applause erupted in St. Peter’s Square even before Francis finished pronouncing the rite of canonization, evidence of the admiration Mother Teresa enjoyed from Christians and non-Christians alike during her life and after her 1997 death.
At the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity group that she founded in Kolkata, hundreds of people watching the Mass on TV clapped with joy when Francis declared her a saint. They gathered around Mother’s tomb which was decorated with flowers, a single candle and a photo of the tiny wrinkled saint.
“I am so proud to be from Kolkata,” said Sanjay Sarkar, a high school student on hand for the celebration. “Mother Teresa belonged to Kolkata, and she has been declared a saint.”
For Francis, 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. He admitted even he would find it hard to call her “St. Teresa” since her tenderness was so maternal.
In his homily, Francis praised her as the merciful saint who defended the lives of the unborn, sick and abandoned, recalling her strong anti-abortion stance which often put her at odds with progressives around the world.
“She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity,” he said. “She 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.”