Pope Francis Declares Mother Teresa A Saint

Pope Francis has declared Mother Teresa a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in a religious ceremony in St. Peter’s Square in Rome’s Vatican City.

The service on September 4 comes 19 years after the death of Teresa, a Catholic nun who spent her life helping the poor in the slums of the Indian city now known as Kolkata but formerly called Calcutta.

More than 100,000 people attended the ceremony in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Those attending included some 1,500 poor or needy people who are looked after by the Italian branches of Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity.

Critics say Mother Teresa and her order did little to alleviate the pain of the terminally ill and nothing to tackle the root causes of poverty.

She was also accused of trying to convert the destitute in predominantly Hindu India to Christianity, a charge her mission has repeatedly denied.

Born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu to ethnic Albanian parents in 1910 in modern-day Macedonia, she became a nun at 16 and moved to India in 1929, opening her first mission in 1950.

Source: rferl.org

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