Pope Francis declares Mother Teresa a Saint and model of Jubilee Year of Mercy

Mother Teresa experienced  a “dark night of the soul”, a period of spiritual doubt, loneliness and despair. Tens of thousands of pilgrims  both poor rich flocked to St Peter’ Square today for canonisation of Mother Teresa, the small nun who cared for the world’s most destitute and became an icon of a Catholic Church. Pope Francis declared her a saint at a morning Mass, making her model of his Jubilee Year of Mercy and his entire papacy.

Mother Theresa put into action his ideal of the church as a merciful “Field Hospital” for the poorest of the poor, those suffering both material and spiritual poverty.  Pilgrims from around the world prayed at vigils in churches and flocked before dawn to the Vatican to attend the mass being celebrated under hot sun and blue skies, to honour a woman given India’s highest civilian and humanitarian awards for her work in the slums of Kolkata. Thirteen heads of state and government led official delegations and 1500 homeless people invited by Pope Francis had VIP seats and were treated to a Neapolitan Pizza lunch in the Vatican auditorium. Pope Francis recognised holiness in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony sensing that God had abandoned her. She died in 1997, and her case lasted for nearly fifty years – an almost unheard of trial.