Mother Teresa’s canonisation portends more conversions: VHP

The 11-member delegation is to be led by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

The nun founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation that runs hospices in India. Right-wing Hindu nationalists object to the honouring of a Christian whose work highlighted the desperate poverty of parts of their country and the failure of the government and civil society to deal with it, and fear a new surge of interest in Catholicism because of it.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday paid tributes to Mother Teresa, saying every Indian must feel proud as she has officially been recognised as a saint.

The official delegation heading to Vatican on Sep 4 to attend Mother Teresa’s canonisation includes BJP and Cong leaders, a Supreme Court judge, an eminent lawyer and secretary general of Catholic Bishop Council of India.

“Every citizen of India, including our almost 20 million Catholics, takes enormous pride and joy on the recognition by your Holiness and the Catholic Church of Mother Teresa’s profound nobility of soul, purity of goal, and service to God through service to humanity”, she wrote in her letter. We have been raising it for years.

“It is a proud moment for India that just days before the canonisation of Mother Teresa in Rome, her life-size bronze statue has been unveiled at Archbishop House by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (‘Life” page – “Life-size statue of Mother Teresa unveiled”, August 27).

Mother Teresa died in 1997 at the age of 87.