VATICAN CITY, Holy See—Pope Francis on Sunday declared revered nun Mother Teresa a saint in a canonization mass at St Peter’s square.
“For the honor of the Blessed Trinity… 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,” the pontiff said in Latin.
The elevation of one of the icons of 20th Century Christianity came a day before the 19th anniversary of her death, at 87, in Calcutta, the Indian city where she spent nearly four decades working with the dying and the destitute.
St. teresa. A devotee of Mother Teresa offers a prayer at the Holy Redeemer Parish Church in Quezon City. The nun from Calcutta was canonized as saint during a Mass in Vatican on Sunday. Manny Palmero
Born to Kosovar Albanian parents in Skopje—then part of the Ottoman empire, now the capital of Macedoni—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.
But she was also regarded with scorn by secular critics who accused her of being more concerned with evangelism than with improving the lot of the poor.
The debate over the nun’s legacy has continued after her death with researchers uncovering financial irregularities in the running of her order, the Missionaries of Charity, and evidence mounting of patient neglect, insalubrious conditions and questionable conversions of the vulnerable in her missions.
A picture of her as someone who was just as comfortable flying around in a private plane as clutching the hand of a dying patient has also emerged to counterbalance her saintly image.
Skeptics were absent from the Vatican Sunday, however, as Francis paid 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 on the fast track to sainthood, thanks largely to one of the few people to have achieved canonization faster, John Paul II.
The Polish cleric was a personal friend of Teresa and as the pope at the time of her death, he was responsible for her being beatified in 2003.
Achieving sainthood requires the Vatican to approve accounts of two miracles occurring as a result of prayers for Teresa’s intercession.
The first one, ratified in 2002, was of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, who says she recovered from ovarian cancer a year after Teresa’s death—something local health officials have put down to medical advances rather than the power of prayer.
In the second, approved last year, Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino says his wife’s prayers to Teresa led to brain tumors disappearing. Eight years later, Andrino and his wife Fernanda will be in the congregation on Sunday.
Also among the crowd at St Peter’s was Teresa Burley, an Italy-based American teacher of children with learning difficulties who says the soon-to-be Saint Teresa inspired her vocation.
“I’m also named Teresa,” she said. “I remember growing up admiring the things she did for children and the poor.
“We need to remember we are here to help each other. We need to be here for those who can’t help themselves. It’s the same for refugees arriving here: we have to be there to help them transition into their new lives.”
Many Indians have made the trip to Rome, among them Kiran Kakumanu, 40, who was blessed by Teresa when he was a baby and grew up to become a priest.
Abraham, an Indian expatriate in London, said Teresa’s life had set a unique example to the world.
“She practiced Christianity. The majority of Christians only spend their time talking about it.”