IMAGE: Paul Haring
By Junno Arocho Esteves and Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With a large tapestry bearing
the portrait of the woman known as the “Saint of the Gutters” suspended
above him, Pope Francis proclaimed the sainthood of Mother Teresa of Kolkata, hailing
her courage and love for the poor.
Despite the formality of the occasion though, “her
sanctity is so close to us, so tender and fruitful, that spontaneously we will
continue to call her ‘Mother Teresa,'” Pope Francis said to applause at
the canonization Mass Sept. 4.
“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her
life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for
everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those
abandoned and discarded,” the pope said in his homily during the Mass in
St. Peter’s Square.
An estimated 120,000 people packed the
square, many holding umbrellas or waving fans to keep cool under the sweltering
heat of the Roman sun. However, upon hearing Pope Francis “declare and
define Blessed Teresa of Kolkata to be a saint,” the crowds could not
contain their joy, breaking out in cheers and thunderous applause before he
finished speaking.
The moment was especially sweet for more
than 300 Albanians who live in Switzerland, but came to Rome for the
canonization. “We are very proud,” said Violet Barisha, a member of
the Albanian Catholic Mission in St. Gallen.
Daughter of Divine Charity Sister Valdete, a
Kosovar and one of the Albanian group’s chaplains, said, “We are so happy
and honored. We are a small people, but have had so many martyrs.”
Born in 1910 to an ethnic Albanian family in
Skopje, in what is now part of Macedonia, Mother Teresa went to India in 1929
as a Sister of Loreto and became an Indian citizen in 1947. She founded the
Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
Mother Teresa, Sister Valdete said, is a
shining example of how “Albanian women are strong and our people are
hardworking.”
In his homily, Pope Francis said God’s will
is explained in the words of the prophets: “I want mercy, not
sacrifice.”
“God is pleased by every act of mercy
because in the brother or sister that we assist, we recognize the face of God
which no one can see,” he said. “Each time we bend down to the needs
of our brothers and sisters, we give Jesus something to eat and drink; we
clothe, we help and we visit the Son of God.”
Like Mother Teresa, he said, Christians are called
not simply to perform acts of charity, but to live charity as a vocation and “to
grow each day in love.”
“Wherever someone is reaching out,
asking for a helping hand in order to get up, this is where our presence — and
the presence of the church which sustains and offers hope — must be,” the
pope said.
Mother Teresa, he said, lived out this
vocation to charity through her commitment to defending the unborn and bowing
down “before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the
road.”
She also “made her voice heard before
the powers of this world so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime
of poverty they created,” Pope Francis said. “For Mother Teresa,
mercy was the ‘salt’ which gave flavor to her work, it was the ‘light’ which
shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their
poverty and suffering.”
For all Christians, especially volunteers
engaged in works of mercy, the life of the saintly nun remains an example and
witness to God’s closeness to the poorest of the poor, he said.
“Today, I pass on this emblematic
figure of holiness!” Pope Francis said. “May this tireless worker of
mercy help us to increasingly understand that our only criterion for action is
gratuitous love, free from every ideology and all obligations, offered freely
to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race or religion.”
As she made her way through the tight
security and past several closed streets to St. Peter’s Square, Maria Demuru
said, “I couldn’t miss this. Even if there’s no place left for me to
sit.”
The small Italian woman said, “Mother
Teresa is a sign of the times. In her smallness, she revealed the calling we
all have. She said we are all saints by our baptism and we must recover our
original holiness. She lived in humility and simplicity like the poor of the
earth and was never ashamed of that.”
Mother Teresa’s simplicity did not keep the
powerful away from the Mass, though. Some 20 nations sent official delegations
to the Vatican for the canonization. Queen Sofia of Spain led a delegation. The
president and prime minister of Albania attended, as did the presidents of
Macedonia and Kosovo and the foreign minister of India.
President Barack Obama sent a delegation led
by Lisa Monaco, his assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism. The
U.S. delegation also included Ken Hackett, ambassador to the Holy See; Carolyn
Woo, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services; and Dominican Sister Donna
Markham, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA.
The first reading at the Mass was read by
Jim Towey, who served as Mother Teresa’s legal counsel in the United States and
Canada from 1985 to 1997, and as director of the White House Office of
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, 2002-2006.
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