Mother Teresa was ordained a saint by the Pope in a well-attended ceremony at St. Peter’s Square on Sunday. It has been a while since the “angel of mercy” was seen as a saint by many worldwide, well beyond her adopted home in India. This was to be the highlight of the Jubilee Year, which Pope Francis had proclaimed would be on the theme of mercy. There is an aptness to Saint Teresa being canonised now: she was the very embodiment of the spirit of compassion for fellow humans, caring for the terminally ill with a devotion that is hard to achieve for most people. Her Missionaries of Charity has been a beacon of light for the poorest of the poor for decades, another reason why there’s universal appreciation of the Vatican’s decision.
There has been an eruption of joy in India where she was revered long before the world had heard of this nun from Macedonia who settled down in this country after a moment of epiphany while on a train journey. The worldwide jubilation as Mother Teresa was ordained Saint Teresa of Calcutta is a genuine tribute to the Nobel Peace Prize winner having become one of the most influential women in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. As the Pope himself said, it might take a while for people to forget her honorific of “Mother” since she was such a ministering angel to the poorest of the poor, most of them residents of Kolkata’s most crowded slums. Known to be pushy in getting her work done, Mother Teresa was an active fundraiser for a noble cause. The Pope’s words couldn’t have rung truer than when he said Saint Teresa had shamed world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created”. The world’s inequities never stand out sharper than when we consider how she reached out to the poor and dispossessed abandoned by society.
It’s a pointer to the complexities of human thought that even at a beautiful moment like this, criticism is heard about some of Mother’s deeds, her ways of collecting money for charity questioned, also her treatment of some of the terminally ill. The point is that the totality of an individual’s contribution is important: when someone has served humanity to this extent, it would be pointless even to take note of such criticism, even if it comes from those who only question some of her methods. The right-minded wouldn’t carp at a time like this, when a venerated figure who embraced India and served it well attains sainthood. Also, this is not the time for a discussion on miracles and how these are recognised. Those are really matters of faith. The joy of worshipping a saint is a reward in itself.
