World cheers as Pope bestows sainthood on Mother Teresa

 

Mother Teresa, the nun whose work with the dying and destitute of Kolkata made her a global icon of Christian charity, was made a saint today.

 

Her elevation to Roman Catholicism's celestial pantheon came in a canonisation mass in St Peter's square in the Vatican that was presided over by Pope Francis in the presence of 100,000 pilgrims.

 

"For the honour of the Blessed Trinity... we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) 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 ceremony came a day before the 19th anniversary of Teresa's death in Kolkata, the Indian city where she spent nearly four decades tending to the poorest of the poor.

 

Born to Kosovan-Albanian parents in Skopje - then part of the Ottoman empire, now the capital of Macedonia - 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.

 

Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint at a morning Mass, making her the model of his Jubilee Year of Mercy and in some ways his entire papacy. 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.

 

Throughout the night, pilgrims prayed at vigils in area churches and flocked before dawn to the Vatican to try to get a good spot for the Mass being celebrated under a searing hot sun and blue skies.
    

 

"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."

 

One group of 40 Indian nationals travelled from Macerata, Italy to honour 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."

 

In addition, 13 heads of state and government led official delegations while 1,500 homeless people invited by Pope Francis had VIP seats and were treated by the pope to a Neapolitan pizza lunch in the Vatican auditorium afterwards.

 

The Roman Catholic Church has more than 10,000 saints, many of whom had to wait centuries before their elevation. But Mother Teresa, one of the most recognisable faces of the 20th century, was put on the fast track to sainthood after dying of a heart attack on Sept. 5, 1997.

 

The late Pope John Paul II bent Vatican rules to allow the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be launched two years after her death instead of the usual five, and she was beatified in 2003.

 

The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven and able to intercede with God to perform miracles. She has been credited with two miracles, both involving the healing of sick people.