Pope Francis declares Mother Teresa a saint

TIL Desk/World/ Vatican City-Pope Francis on Sunday proclaimed Mother Teresa of Kolkata a saint, hailing her as the personification of maternal love and a powerful advocate for the poor. “We may have some difficulty in calling her “Saint Teresa,” the pontiff said. “Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful that we continue to spontaneously call her Mother.”

The comments came at a canonisation mass attended by 100,000 pilgrims, including 13 heads of state or government and hundreds of sari-clad nuns from Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity. Queen Sofia of Spain and 1,500 homeless people also looked on as Francis described Teresa’s work as “eloquent witness to God’s closeness to the poorest of the poor.”

To applause, he added: “Mother Teresa loved to say, ‘perhaps I don’t speak their language but I can smile”. The joyful atmosphere in the Vatican was mirrored in Kolkata, where candles and flowers were laid on Teresa’s tomb at the headquarters of her order. “It is a day of rejoicing, a day of gratitude and a day of many, many blessings”.

Francis also used his sermon to recall Teresa’s fervent opposition to abortion, which she termed “murder by the mother” in a controversial Nobel Peace prize speech in 1979. She “ceaselessly proclaimed that the unborn are the weakest”, he said. The ceremony came on the eve of the 19th anniversary of Teresa’s death in Kolkata, where she spent nearly four decades working in wretched slums.