New Delhi: The news of Pope Francis approving sainthood of Mother Teresa of Kolkata has stirred Catholics and others throughout the world.
Cardinal Baselios Mar Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, says the world renowned nun’s canonization will give “a huge boost” to all those who are involved in care giving.
“This not only brings a lot of joy to the millions of Indians cutting across religions but also hope to the (millions) of destitute and orphans across the world. I also greet all at the Missionaries of Charities who are doing a wonderful job,” the cardinal, who also heads the Syro-Malankara Church, said in a statement on March 15.
Archbishop Joshua Mar Ignathios of Mavelikara says Mother Teresa was a ‘saint’ even when she was alive.
“This was an accepted fact, not just in India but across the world because of the yeomen service she did for the underprivileged. Its because the Catholic Church has a process through which sainthood has to be cleared and hence it came now,” he added.
Mother Teresa, who was 87 when she died in 1997, won the 1979 Nobel peace prize for her work with the poor.
Mother Teresa’s appeal went beyond the Indian shores.
Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu, chairperson of the Uganda Episcopal Conference, welcomed Mother Teresa’s canonization saying it was long overdue. She truly had a great commitment to the poor and the people of India as a whole, the African prelate said. “I am so impressed by her life. She was simple and seriously valued the lives of human beings,” he added.
The news has delighted UK-based Gëzim Alpion, who has been tirelessly campaigning for the canonization of Mother Teresa for two years.
“I am delighted to hear that Mother Teresa will be canonized,” he told Matters India through an email message.
Alpion, professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham, says canonization is “a remarkable and fully deserved acknowledgment on the part of the Vatican, of the exemplary devotion that Albanian-born Mother Teresa showed to this institution, her religious vocation, and the Catholic faith for 69 years as a missionary.”
Mother Teresa’s canonization will inspire more people, secular and religious, to pay more attention to the abandoned and the marginalized, he added.
The professor says although the saintly nun held “some strong and controversial views” on abortion few can deny that “this revolutionary religious personality was a force of nature when it came to defending the sanctity of life and holding sacred human dignity.”
Mother Teresa’s canonization, he says acknowledged “the exemplary commitment to her vision that thousands of members of the Missionaries of Charity have been showing for seven decades since the foundation of the order in 1950.”
He further adds: As someone who has had the chance to see the work that the Missionaries of Charity do in India and several other countries across the world, I would say to those who criticize Mother Teresa and the members of her religious community: “Before trashing what they do, why don’t you put yourselves in their sandals if only for a week to see what helping ‘human debris’ actually entails.”
The professor who does not profess any particular religion says Mother Teresa’s sainthood is another step in the right direction for the Vatican to recognize the inestimable contribution of the nuns in general. One can only hope that the day will come sooner when nuns will be elected bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes, he added.
Back in India, Fr Paul Thelakat, editor of the Sathyadeepam weekly, says Mother Teresa is “the most apt saint” for India of the present era. “Her saintliness was not only mystical but heaven-centered humanism where every human person especially the poor, forgotten marginalized presented the wounded face of the crucified Christ,” he said.
With the canonization of Mother Teresa, India will have six saints. Five of them were made saints in the span of eight years.
The first Indian to become saint was Franciscan Brother Gonsalo Garcia from Portuguese India, who died as a martyr in Japan in 1597. He was one of the 26 Martyrs of Japan. He was canonized in 1862.
India then had to wait for146 years to get the next saint. Alphonsa, who died in 1946 aged 36 in Kerala, became the first woman saint of India when Pope Benedict XVI canonized her in 2008.
Six years later, Pope Francis canonized two saints from India, Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Euphrasia Eluvathingal.
The same Pope declared Joseph Vaz, a priest from Goa, as a saint in 2015. The 17th-century Oratorian priest is known as the Apostle of Sri Lanka.
Mother Teresa’s canonization is set for September 4, 2016.