Mother Teresa: 'Saint of the Gutters' Canonized at Vatican

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mother Teresa: 'Saint of the Gutters' Canonized at Vatican

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SEPT. 4, 2016, 11:42 A.M. E.D.T.

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VATICAN CITY — Elevating the "saint of the gutters" to one of the
Catholic Church's highest honors, Pope Francis on Sunday praised
Mother Teresa for her radical dedication to society's outcasts and her
courage in shaming world leaders for the "crimes of poverty they
themselves created."

An estimated 120,000 people filled St. Peter's Square for the
canonization ceremony, less than half the number who turned out for
her 2003 beatification. It was nevertheless the highlight of Francis'
Holy Year of Mercy and quite possibly one of the defining moments of
his mercy-focused papacy.

Francis has been dedicated to ministering to society's most marginal,
from prostitutes to prisoners, refugees to the homeless. In that way,
while the canonization of "St. Teresa of Kolkata" was a celebration of
her life and work, it was also something of an affirmation of Francis'
own papal priorities, which have earned him praise and criticism
alike.

"Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we
meet along our journey, especially those who suffer," Francis said in
his homily.

Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on Aug. 26, 1910, Teresa came to India in
1929 as a sister of the Loreto order. In 1946, she received what she
described as a "call within a call" to found a new order dedicated to
caring for the most unloved and unwanted, the "poorest of the poor" in
the slums of her adopted city, Kolkata.

The Missionaries of Charity order went on to become one of the most
well-known in the world, with more than 4,000 sisters in their
trademark blue-trimmed white saris doing as Teresa instructed: "small
things with great love."

At the order's Mother House in Kolkata, hundreds of people watched the
Mass on TV and clapped with joy when Francis declared her a saint.

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They gathered around Teresa's tomb which was decorated with flowers, a
single candle and a photo of the wrinkled saint.

"I am so proud to be from Kolkata," said Sanjay Sarkar, a high school
student on hand for the celebration. "Mother Teresa belonged to
Kolkata, and she has been declared a saint."

For Francis, Teresa put into action his ideal of the church as a
"field hospital" for those suffering both material and spiritual
poverty, living on the physical and existential peripheries of
society.

In his homily, Francis praised her as the merciful saint who defended
the lives of the unborn, sick and abandoned, recalling her strong
opposition to abortion which often put her at odds with progressives
around the world.

"She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side
of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity," he said.

Teresa's most famous critic, Christopher Hitchens, has accused her of
taking donations from dictators — charges church authorities deny.
Francis chose to emphasize her other dealings with the powerful.

"She made her voice heard before the powers of the world, so that they
might recognize their guilt for the crimes of poverty they themselves
created," he said, repeating for emphasis "the crimes of poverty."

Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters had front-row seats at the
Mass, alongside 1,500 homeless people and 13 heads of state or
government and even royalty: Queen Sofia of Spain. For the homeless,
Francis offered a luncheon afterward in the Vatican auditorium,
catered by a Neapolitan pizza maker who brought his own ovens for the
event.

"Her heart, she gave it to the world," said Charlotte Samba, a
52-year-old mother of three who traveled with a church group from
Gabon for the Mass. "Mercy, forgiveness, good works: It is the heart
of a mother for the poor."

While big, the crowd attending the canonization wasn't even half of
the 300,000 who turned out for Mother Teresa's 2003 beatification
celebrated by an ailing St. John Paul II. The low turnout suggested
that financial belt-tightening and security fears in the wake of
Islamic extremist attacks in Europe may have kept pilgrims away.

Those fears prompted a huge, 3,000-strong law enforcement presence to
secure the area around the Vatican and close the airspace above. Many
of those security measures have been in place for the duration of the
Jubilee year, which officially ends in November.

While Francis is clearly keen to hold Teresa up as a model for her
joyful dedication to the poor, he was also recognizing holiness in a
nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony, sensing that
God had abandoned her.

According to correspondence that came to light after she died in 1997,
Teresa experienced what the church calls a "dark night of the soul" —
a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the
great mystics experienced. In Teresa's case, it lasted for nearly 50
years — an almost unheard of trial.

For the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded
Teresa's saint-making campaign, the revelations were further
confirmation of Mother Teresa's heroic saintliness. He said that by
canonizing her, Francis is recognizing that she not only shared the
material poverty of the poor but the spiritual poverty of those who
feel "unloved, unwanted, uncared for."

"If I'm going to be a saint, I'm going to be a saint of darkness, and
I'll be asking from heaven to be the light of those who are in
darkness on Earth," she once wrote.

Francis has never publicly mentioned this "darkness," but he has in
many ways modeled his papacy on Teresa and her simple lifestyle and
selfless service to the poor: He eschewed the Apostolic Palace for a
hotel room, made welcoming migrants and the poor a hallmark and has
fiercely denounced today's "throwaway" culture that discards the
unborn, the sick and the elderly with ease.

Teresa's Missionaries of Charity went on to become a global order of
nuns, priests, brothers and lay co-workers. She was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1979 and died in 1997. Soon thereafter, John Paul
placed her on the fast-track for sainthood.

Francis has confessed that he was somewhat intimidated by Teresa,
knowing well she was as tough as she was tender. He quipped during a
2014 visit to Albania that he would never have wanted her as his
superior because she was so firm with her sisters.

But on Sunday, he admitted that even he would find it hard to call her
"St. Teresa," since her tenderness was so maternal.

"Spontaneously, we will continue to say 'Mother Teresa,'" he said to applause.

___

Associated Press writer Bernat Armangue in Kolkata, India, contributed
to this report.

___

___

A previous version of this story has been corrected to say Queen Sofia
of Spain is not a head of state or government.

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