Mother gets a halo, the world a saint

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, now in Macedonia, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.

Vatican City:  Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world merged here on Sept 4 for the canonisation of Mother Teresa. As Pope Francis declared her Saint Teresa of Calcutta at exactly 10.40am local time (2.10pm IST), St Peter's Square resonated with applause.

John – theroar of the crowd drowned out his surname – wasone of the few who did not clap. He couldn't John was born without arms.But that has not stopped him from “doing God's work” or visiting the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 2013. On Sunday, he was present at the canonisation, having flown from the US for the occasion.

“She is such an inspiration,” he said. Asked what made him undertake an inconvenient journey, thousands of kilometres across the Atlantic, he replied simply, “How could I not be here today?” Everyone in the crowd celebrated Saint Teresa's elevation in the hierarchy of the Catholic church, but none more than the few hundred like John who turned up from all over the world, despite some physical disability or the other.

“She was one of us,” explained wheelchair-bound Kalyani from Kerala. She, too, has a Kolkata connect. Unlike John, hers is a direct link with Saint Teresa. “Yes, I worked with her in the 1970s in your City of Joy,” she said. “Yes, I still cannot walk despite her holy touch but what I have seen her doing is a far bigger miracle than my getting up and walking.”

Behind her sat a European, who shared the sentiments of the North American (John) and the Asian (Kalyani). Sister Naomi, another Missionaries of Charity nun, is from the Czech Republic. She has never been to Kolkata and cannot wait to make that “pilgrimage” but believes firmly that Saint Teresa's life itself is a miracle.

But the pilgrimage that the Czech nun spoke about went on throughout the day. The destination was not Kolkata but a place a few hundred metres away, at Dono di Maria, the convent run by Saint Teresa's order.

Edwin and Patrick are from a country in Africa-Tanzania -training to be priests in Rome. “We feel good when we are near her,” Edwin said, explaining their decision to be there after the canonisation.

Saint Teresa may be adored across borders, but there were several pockets in St Peter's Square where India let the world know that the Macedonia-born nun belonged a little more to Kolkata and India. Hundreds of Indians came armed with the Tricolour, and the flags were held higher and got an extra wave each time Pope Francis mentioned the places on the Indian map that had been blessed by Saint Teresa's presence and work: “Darjeeling”, “Bengali-medium school in Calcutta”.

“She may belong to the world but we are celebrating the fact that destiny brought her to India,” said Shanti from Kerala as she helped her friends unfurl a huge Tricolour.

An 11-year-old wheelchairbound girl from Rome, who stayed for the entire two hours and more under the blazing sun, disagreed. Sitting across the aisle from the Czech Republic's Sister Naomi and Kerala's Kalyani, she firmly claimed Saint Teresa for people like herself, “who need a little help”. “She is a Saint because of people like us,” she said with the logic of a child.

Source: Times of India