Pope Francis canonizes Mother Teresa, India's 'saint of the gutters'

Indian Nuns from the Catholic Order of the Missionaries of Charity watch the live telecast of the canonisation of Mother Teresa from Rome, at the Mother House in Kolkata on September 4, 2016.
(Image credit: Dibyangshu Sarkar/Getty Images)

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the "saint of the gutters" who spent years working among India's most destitute, was formally canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church on Sunday in a ceremony led by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. The service was attended by an estimated 120,000 people and included a pizza lunch for 1,500 homeless people in Teresa's name.

"For Mother Teresa, mercy was the salt which gave flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering," Francis said, describing the new saint as a "dispenser of divine mercy" who held the powerful accountable "for the crimes of poverty they created."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.