VATICAN CITY – Mother Teresa has been proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis in a ceremony at the Vatican.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims had flocked to St Peter’s Square before dawn on Sunday for the Mass and canonization, the BBC reported.
Some 1,500 homeless people across Italy were also brought to Rome in buses to be given seats of honour at the celebration – and then a pizza lunch served by 250 nuns and priests of the Sisters of Charity order.
Two miraculous cures of the sick after Mother Teresa’s death in 1997 have been attributed to her intercession.
In 2002, the Vatican ruled that an Indian woman’s stomach tumour had been miraculously cured after prayers to Mother Teresa, despite the doubts of her husband.
Pope Francis cleared the way for sainthood last year when he recognised a second miracle attributed to her.
Her work complements Francis’ vision of a Church that serves the underprivileged.
Her canonisation is a centrepiece of his Jubilee Year of Mercy.
In India, a special Mass was celebrated at the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in Kolkata.
Large TV screens were set up at Mother House in Kolkata (Calcutta) for the Vatican ceremony.
Cardinal Angelo Amato read a brief biography of Mother Teresa’s work, then asked the Pope to canonise her in the name of the Church.
Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters attended the event, along with 13 heads of state or government.
Pope Francis responded: “After due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church.”
From Sister to Saint
Mother Teresa founded a sisterhood that runs 19 homes, and won the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 1997 – aged 87 – and was beatified in 2003, the first step to sainthood.
Born in 1910 to ethnic Albanian parents, Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu grew up in what is now the Macedonian capital, Skopje, but was then part of the Ottoman Empire.
Aged 19, she joined the Irish order of Loreto and in 1929 was sent to India, where she taught at a school in Darjeeling under the name of Therese.
In 1946, she moved to Kolkata to help the destitute and, after a decade, set up a hospice and a home for abandoned children.
She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. The sisterhood now has 4,500 nuns worldwide.
Mother Teresa achieved worldwide acclaim for her work in Kolkata’s slums, but her critics accused her of pushing a hardline Catholicism, mixing with dictators and accepting funds from them for her charity.
