Vatican City: “We are grateful to God and to Pope Francis, who proclaimed the Year of mercy and chose Mother Teresa as an ‘icon of mercy’.
Mother Teresa’s canonization is an opportunity to spread the message of the Gospel and God’s mercy: we hope that the grace of mercy reaches every human being, especially the poorest and most desperate”: says Sister Mary Prema Pierick, Superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, on the eve of the celebration to be held on September 4 at the Vatican, where Mother Teresa will be proclaimed a saint.
The Superior, a 63-year-old German religious, speaking to Agenzia Fides notes that “the message and work of Mother Teresa is fully present and will exist until there is a suffering humanity, humiliated, outcast in the world”. Her work today “continues thanks to the Missionaries of Charity, the Brothers of Charity (priests) but also to all men and women of good will who continue to serve the poor, the marginalized, the dying, becoming tools in the hands of God and his mercy”.
The life of the Sisters is “a life of prayer and service to those in need, in the knowledge that in them Christ is present in our midst”. “Mother Teresa – she concludes – acknowledged Christ in the poor and for this reason the poor are central to her mission. Mercy was for her a way of life, made of love, kindness, forgiveness, compassion toward all”.
According to data provided by Sister Prema, there are 5,160 Missionaries of Charity in the world today, present in 139 countries with a total of 758 between homes and institutions. Whereas 397 priests of the “Brothers of Charity”, work in 69 houses, scattered in 21 countries around the world.