VATICAN CORNER
On Sunday September 4, 2016, 120,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square for the canonization Mass of Mother Teresa, one of the central moments of the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Many volunteers were present to celebrate the Jubilee for Volunteers and Worker of Mercy. Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint saying that she shone a light in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering. He admitted that he will find it hard to call her “Saint Teresa” “because her holiness is so tender and fruitful that we will continue to spontaneously call her “mother”. Francis praised her as the merciful saint who defended the lives of the unborn and those abandoned and discarded. “She bowed down – he said – before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity”. In his homily he highlighted how the little nun who died in 1997 had taken in society’s most unwanted, and shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created”. He defined Mother Teresa as a “tireless worker of mercy” and held her up as a “model of holiness” for the numerous representatives of the “whole world of volunteers” present at the celebration. “How many hearts have been comforted by volunteers! How many hands they have held, how many tears they have wiped away, how much love has been poured out in hidden, humble and selfless service! That service gives voice to the faith and expresses the mercy of the Father, who draws near to those in need.” Following the canonization 250 nuns and 50 brothers from Mother Teresa’s religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, served 1,500 homeless people at the Vatican auditorium where chefs dispensed fresh baked pizzas from three ovens brought in for the occasion. The invited poor and needy were from the houses of the Sisters of Mother Teresa from all over Italy, including Milan, Bologna, Florence, Naples and Rome. They had been bused in overnight, and it was a fitting tribute to Mother Teresa’s commitment to the poor, on the day that Pope Francis declared her a saint. At the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, (formerly Calcutta) hundreds of people watched the Mass on television clapped with joy when Francis made the declaration of sainthood. They gathered around Mother Teresa’s tomb, which was decorated with flowers, a single candle and a photo of the tiny saint. At the Mass of Thanksgiving the next day, Cardinal Pietro Parolin concluded his homily remembering the two simple words that Mother Teresa had posted in every house of the Missionaries of Charity: ‘I thirst’. ‘I thirst,’ he said, ‘a thirst for fresh, clean water, a thirst for souls to console and to redeem from their ugliness to make them beautiful and pleasing in the eyes of God, a thirst for God, for His vital and luminous presence. I thirst; this is the thirst which burned in Mother Teresa: her cross and exaltation, her torment and her glory. ’’St. Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!’
Sources: news.va, latimes.com, bbc.com