AJ Philip in Vatican
Tens of thousands of people who filled the St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican witnessed on Sunday morning Pope Francis declaring Blessed Teresa Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The long-awaited declaration was received with a thunderous clapping by the audience that comprised people from all walks of life from Cardinals to presidents to priests to ministers to beggars and from all the four continents.
Nearly 200 television companies from around the world were present at the Vatican to give live coverage of the event to tens of millions of viewers. Also present were nearly 700 journalists representing print and other media.
As security men did not allow the visitors from occupying seats at the square the previous night, they gathered at the gates since early morning to get a vantage position. In fact, long queues of men, women and children were found at all the gates since early morning. Everyone who attended had to face the security paraphernalia.
The sun was mercilessly hot but that did not deter the people who wanted to see Mother Teresa, who saw Christ in the poorest of the poor, raised to the galaxy of saints beginning with St. Michael to St. Peter to St. John Paul II to many others.
Long before the ceremony began with the singing of the hymn of the Jubilee of Mercy, the square was filled to capacity with many having to wait outside. No, they did not have to miss the programme as huge screens were in place to give them a clear view of the proceedings.
The large audience heard with pindrop silence Cardinal Angelo Amato read a brief biography of Mother Teresa. In about seven minutes, he read out how the Mother who was born at Skopje, Albania, on August 26, 1910, and was named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu, founded the Missionaries of Charity and became an icon of care, compassion and love for the poor. He concluded the bio, “She thus became an icon of God’s tender and merciful love for all, especially for those who are unloved, unwanted and uncared for. From heavens she continues to “kindle a light for those living in darkness here on earth”.
Nuns — some wearing the distinctive blue and white robes of Mother Teresa’s order –, pilgrims and tourists crammed into the square in front of the St. Peter’s Basilica for the two-hour ceremony.
A large portrait of the Mother overlooked the Square from its position on the much-photographed walls of the Basilica. Police officers and volunteers in yellow tabards and baseball caps marshalled the crowds between crash barriers, and Red Cross workers handed out bottles of water.
About 1,500 homeless people in Italy were given seats of honour at the celebration, which was to be followed by a pizza lunch served by 250 nuns and priests of the Missionaries of Charity on the orders of the Pope.
When Cardinal Amato and Mother Teresa’s Postulator P. Bryan, implored Pope Francis to declare her Saint, the head of the Catholic Church rose to the occasion and said, “For the honour of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy apostles Peter and Paul, and our own, and after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a Saint and we enrol her among the Saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole church. In the name of the father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
What a wonderful moment it was! Witnessing the function was, among others, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who was given a seat of honour, closest to the podium. From the spot earmarked for photographers, I could see the minister declining the service of an umbrella-holder preferring to be one among the thousands braving the sun.
The previous evening, she told a gathering of Indians at the Indian Embassy where Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and all the members of the Indian official delegation were present, that India had the glorious tradition of welcoming all the practitioners of various faiths who faced persecution. “In India they found a home where they could practise their faith without let or hindrance”.
The minister said Mother Teresa was never seen as a foreigner. “She was always considered an Indian and one of the greatest Indians worthy of the highest title it could offer a person — Bharat Ratna”. Swaraj seemed to speak on behalf of every Indian!
In fact, she echoed the sentiments of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who tweeted from Hangzhou in China, “As Indians we have to feel proud about the canonisation of Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa. She had dedicated her life for the upliftment of the poor. She was an Albanian, and English language was not her mother tongue and, yet, she adopted it as her language and served the poor”.
True to expectation, there was a large group of Indians, especially from Kolkata. They waved the national flag whenever Mother Teresa’s name was mentioned. All kinds of flags, national and religious, fluttered as the function got underway with mellifluous music and periodic readings from the Bible.
Earlier, when Sister Prema, who heads the Missionaries of Charity, and who was initiated into the religious vocation by the Mother herself arrived at the square with her sisters carrying relics of the Mother, she was received with a thunderous applause. She still wears the crucifix the Mother gifted to her to the left of her chest, “close to my heart”, as he put it.
If anything, it was a measure of the love and affection for the frail Mother whose congregation had 3,842 sisters working in 594 houses in 120 countries when she passed away on September 5, 1997.
The Missionaries of Charity has grown larger. Today it runs 758 homes, hospices and shelters in 139 countries around the world. In his homily, the Pope paid glorious tributes to the just-declared Saint, whom most Indians considered a living Saint before death snatched her from them.
Said the Pope: “Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded. She was committed to defending life, ceaselessly proclaiming that “the unborn are the weakest, the smallest, the most vulnerable”.
“She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity; she made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognise their guilt for the crime of poverty they created.
“For Mother Teresa, mercy was the “salt” which gave flavour 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.
“Her mission to the urban and existential peripheries remains for us today an eloquent witness to God’s closeness to the poorest of the poor. Today, I pass on this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life to the whole world of volunteers: may she be your model of holiness!
“May this tireless worker of mercy help us to increasingly understand that our only criterion for action is gratuitous love, free from every ideology and all obligations, offered freely to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race or religion.
“Mother Teresa loved to say, “Perhaps, I don’t speak their language, but I can smile”. Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer. In this way, we will open up opportunities of joy and hope for our many brothers and sisters who are discouraged and who stand in need of understanding and tenderness.”
What a brilliant summing up of a person who breathed love for the poor! Small wonder that the homily was received with a rapturous clapping. I noticed that one of the most sought-after books in the libraries and bookshops in Rome and Assisi are the anthology of Pope Francis’ homilies.
Those who are more familiar with canonisation ceremonies told me that it has lost some vitality. “I remember attending the canonisation of John Paul II. I was near the river and could not reach anywhere near the Square.
“This time the crowd is not that large. This may be because of the tightening of security. Many people also realise that the Vatican could be a target for the terrorists. Allowance also had to be made for the fact that the ex-Pope was more a rock star than a religious person”.
Comparisons are odious, for as one Cardinal from India said the other day, “If Mother Teresa was alive, she would have been surprised by the large crowd and would have asked us to disperse, go out and do something for the poor”.
“The canonisation is only the latest in a long line of Catholics to be canonised by the current Pope, many of whom are not nearly as well known as the Mother who won the 1979 Nobel peace prize.
“In fact, since being elected in March 2013, Pope Francis has declared 29 saints, approximately one every six weeks. It is a prolific rate compared with his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, who during his seven-year reign canonised 45 saints.
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“However, it pales in comparison to the record 482 declared by Pope John Paul II. Even accounting for the fact that his reign lasted 26 years, John Paul II bestowed sainthoods at a faster rate (more than one a month) than Francis. John Paul II was himself canonised by Francis in April 2014.”
With today’s canonisation, India has four Catholic saints. The first native Saint from India was Sister Alphonsa. She was followed by Fr Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Sister Euphrasia, all three from Kerala. Mother Teresa was a naturalised Indian.
The holy communion service was led by the Pope and hundreds of priests served the Host to thousands of people assembled there. After the ceremony, the Pope greeted in person the Cardinals and other dignitaries. Among the priests who attended the ceremony, the ones who belonged to the Malankara Catholic Church stood out for their colourful attire.
Thereafter, Pope Francis climbed on the white iconic vehicle to go around the Square to greet the multitudes.
When a saffron-clad Hindu sanyasi greeted him with folded hands, Pope Francis reciprocated in the same manner. He seemed to be in his elements, despite the arduous task of presiding over a ceremony where he was the focus of attention of millions of people both here in Rome and elsewhere in the world.
For me attending the canonisation was not just a journalistic assignment but the fulfilment of a desire kindled in me when I met the Mother during her visit to Bhopal to found her centre there. I was lucky to have a lunch with her. As a sister told me at that time, it was seldom that she ate with a stranger. She always preferred to eat alone or with her sisters.
Those days I was not a great admirer of the Mother. So some of my questions would not have been palatable to her. I asked her how caring for a few hundred people would end poverty in the country, the second most populous.
“No, I cannot end poverty but I can certainly take care of some of the poor who do not have anyone to take care of them. If everyone takes care of someone, poverty will end in this country”. Her words have always remained with me. I could not have imagined when I shook hands with her on that blessed day that I would attend her canonisation at the Vatican on September 4, 2016!
The writer, a senior journalist, currently in Vatican can be reached at [email protected]