Today, Pope Francis declared
Mother Teresa a saint, honoring the nun who cared for the
world’s most destitute and holding her up as a model for a Catholic
Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor, wounded souls.
Applause
erupted in St. Peter’s Square even before Francis finished pronouncing
the rite of canonization at the start of Mass, evidence of the
admiration Mother Teresa enjoyed from Christians and non-Christians
alike.
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. By canonizing her during his
Jubilee Year of Mercy, he in some ways is making her the icon of his
entire pontificate.
Hundreds
of Missionaries of Charity sisters in their trademark blue-trimmed
saris had front-row seats at the Mass, sitting under a searing hot sun
and blue skies alongside 1,500 homeless people and 13 heads of state or
government, including Queen Sofia of Spain.
“Her
heart, she gave it to the world,” said Charlotte Samba, a 52-year-old
mother of three who travelled with a church group from Gabon for the
Mass. “Mercy, forgiveness, good works: It is the heart of a mother for
the poor.”
While
big, the crowds were not as large as the 300,000 who turned out for
Mother Teresa’s 2003 beatification, thanks in part to security fears in
the wake of Islamic extremist attacks in Europe. Those fears prompted a
huge, 3,000-strong law enforcement presence to secure the area around
the Vatican and close the airspace above.
Nevertheless,
those on hand were jubilant to have made the journey — nuns, priests,
volunteers, pilgrims and tourists clutching the coveted 100,000 tickets
issued for the Mass.
One
group of 40 Indian nationals traveled from Macerata, Italy to honor a
woman given India’s highest civilian and humanitarian awards for her
work in the slums of Kolkata. Another group of 100 drove from Kosovo
toting a banner that read: “Mother Teresa: Pray for Us.”
While
Francis is clearly keen to hold Mother Teresa up as a model for her
joyful dedication to society’s outcasts, he is also recognizing holiness
in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony sensing
that God had abandoned her.
According
to correspondence that came to light after she died in 1997, Mother
Teresa experienced what the church calls a “dark night of the soul” — a
period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the great
mystics experienced. In Mother Teresa’s case, it lasted for nearly 50
years — an almost unheard of trial.
For the
Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded Mother
Teresa’s saint-making campaign, the revelations were further
confirmation of Mother Teresa’s heroic saintliness. He said that by
canonizing her, Francis is recognizing that Mother Teresa not only
shared the material poverty of the poor but the spiritual poverty of
those who feel “unloved, unwanted, uncared for.”
“What
she described as the greatest poverty in the world today (of feeling
unloved) she herself was living in relationship with Jesus,” he said in
an interview on the eve of the canonization.
Francis
has in many ways modeled his papacy on Mother Teresa’s simple lifestyle
and selfless service to the poor: He eschewed the Apostolic Palace for a
hotel room, he has made welcoming migrants and the poor a hallmark and
has fiercely denounced today’s “throwaway” culture that discards the
unborn, the sick and the elderly with ease.
In
keeping with her spirit, he was treating 1,500 homeless people bussed
into Rome for the Mass to a pizza lunch in the Vatican auditorium
afterward.
Sunday’s
festivities honoring Mother Teresa weren’t limited to Rome: In Kolkata,
where she spent a lifetime dedicated to the poor, a special Sunday Mass
was held at the order’s Mother House. Volunteers and admirers converged
on Mother House to watch the canonization ceremony, which was being
broadcast on giant TV screens in Kolkata and elsewhere.
Sisters
of Charity volunteers planned to distribute food to the poor nearby
after the ceremony, and community meals were being served across
Catholic parishes in India on Sunday — a symbolic reference to Mother
Teresa’s lifetime of service to humanity, said the Rev. Savarimuthu
Sankar of the archdiocese of New Delhi.
“Let
the example of Mother Teresa inspire all of us to dedicate ourselves to
the welfare of mankind,” said Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.
Ceremonies
were also expected in Skopje, Macedonia, where Mother Teresa was born,
and also in Albania and Kosovo, where people of her same ethnic Albanian
background live.
Born
Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on Aug. 26, 1910, Mother Teresa came to India in
1929 as a sister of the Loreto order. In 1946, she received what she
described as a “call within a call” to found a new order dedicated to
caring for the most unloved and unwanted, the “poorest of the poor.”
In 1950
she founded the Missionaries of Charity, which went onto become a
global order of nuns — identified by their trademark blue-trimmed saris —
as well as priests, brothers and lay co-workers.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
She
died in 1997 after a lifetime spent caring for hundreds of thousands of
destitute and homeless poor in Kolkata, for which she came to be called
the “saint of the gutters.”
St. John Paul II, her most ardent supporter, fast-tracked her for sainthood and beatified her before a crowd of 300,000 in 2003.
