Mother Teresa, revered for her work with the poor in India, has been proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis in a ceremony at the Vatican.
Pope Francis said St Teresa had defended the unborn, sick and abandoned, and had shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created”.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims attended the canonisation in St Peter’s Square.
Two miraculous cures of the sick after Mother Teresa’s death in 1997 have been attributed to her intercession.
The Pope said Mother Teresa had spent her life “bowing down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity”.
Teresa was born an ethnic Albanian, and the Albanian flag was much in evidence, as was the distinctive white habit, trimmed with blue stripes, worn by the nuns of her order, the Missionaries of Charity.
In his homily of St Teresa’s work, Pope Francis said she had shone a light in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering. It was clear that her life reflected the kind of Church that this Pope is trying to build: one that shows mercy to all and offers practical help for the poorest and for all those in need.
Although critics have sought to portray St Teresa as a sinner and a hypocrite, her supporters have been just as vocal in her defence, challenging those critics to live their lives the way St Teresa did, before they cast the first stone.
Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters attended the event, along with 13 heads of state or government. Some 1,500 homeless people across Italy were also brought to Rome in buses to be given seats of honour at the celebration – and then a pizza lunch served by 250 nuns and priests of the Sisters of Charity order.
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