Mother Teresa declared a saint before huge crowds in the Vatican

“We are blessed with this canonization because we know mother is in heaven and she will pray for us and she will bless us”, said Sister Laisa, assistant superior general of the MoC.

Mother Teresa has been officially named a saint thanks to an unbelievable life of working with the poor in India – and this comes just 19 years after her death!

On Sunday, Pope Francis declared Nobel Peace Prize victor Mother Teresa, revered for her work among the poor in India, a saint of the Catholic Church. The Vatican ascribes sainthood to people who it says have been proven to perform miracles after they die. In a secret ballot, Mother Teresa is re-elected with only one dissenting vote – her own – and withdraws request to step down.

Pope Francis has shared a pizza lunch with 1,500 homeless people at the Vatican after Mother Teresa’s canonisation ceremony.

But Pope John Paul II, who met her often, had no doubt about her eligibility for sainthood which made him put her on the route to canonisation two years after her death instead of the usual five. For one who looked so frail, so fragile, and so powerless, her tremendous accomplishments showed how appearances can be so deceiving.

“I didn’t want to miss it”, she said. Mother Teresa was the manager extraordinaire and her single-minded devotion and strength of goal in caring for the less fortunate in our society made her the most successful missionary ever in the history of the Church.

“Mahanoy City – Pope Francis’ voice echoed through St. Teresa of Calcutta Catholic Church early Sunday morning as about 75 parishoners gathered for the coronation of the humble Albanian nun whose name the Roman Catholic Church in Schuylkill County bears”.

In 1979 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for “work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress in the world”.

In his homily Sunday, Rev. Anthony Mugavero pointed out that Mother Teresa willingly took on the most abased chores, particularly cleaning the toilets at the various facilities her order of sisters, the Missionaries of Charity, ran.

“I have a lot of admiration for Mother Teresa but I think everyone should be welcome here”, Tarcone said.

The post How Mother Teresa became Saint Teresa appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Lanong, a former journalist turned politician, who had interviewed Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity global headquarters, known as Mother House, Calcutta in 1976 said: “Mother was adorned a living saint and today the Pope has proclaimed as a saint Teresa of Calcutta for her tireless work to help us understand us about gratuitous love to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race or religion”.

“Let us carry Mother Teresa’s smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey”, Francis tweeted after the ceremony. “For it to work, we must unleash the full force of the human spirit”.

Even Pope Francis is finding it hard to call Mother Teresa “St. Teresa”. It would be misguided, however, to reduce the significance of Mother Teresa to her religious inspiration. My entire village and I am very happy that she is being made a saint. Mother Teresa stood by the vow to provide “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”.

Candles and flowers were laid on Teresa’s tomb at the headquarters of her order in the Indian metropolis she is so closely associated with. Too excited to go back to sleep, many of them filed into the church 4 1/2 hours later to hear Cardinal Seán O’Malley preside over the Mass celebrating the canonization of Mother Teresa. Members of Holy Apostles Church in Rochester spent the night in prayer before watching her canonization live from Rome, beginning here at 4 a.m.