Teresa of Kolkata,
'saint of the gutters',
now officially a saint
by Nicole Winfield
VATICAN CITY, Sept. 4, 2016 (AP) — Elevating the "saint of the gutters" to one of the Catholic Church's highest honors, Pope Francis on Sunday praised Mother Teresa for her radical dedication to society's outcasts and her courage in
shaming world leaders for the "crimes of poverty they themselves created." [Yet another tendentious fiction from JMB!... BTW, I believe Mother Teresa is also the first Nobel Prize winner to have become a saint., a unique conjunction of secular good sense and sancity.]
An estimated 120,000 people filled St. Peter's Square for the canonization ceremony, less than half the number who turned out for her 2003 beatification.
It was nevertheless the highlight of Francis's Holy Year of Mercy and quite possibly one of the defining moments of his mercy-focused papacy. [A downside to the event is the obvious exploitation of it - by the Vatican and the Bergogliophile media - to promote JMB's entire mercy campaign. Even if a quick search of quotations from Mother Teresa shows she used the word love, primarily, and secondarily, compassion, to describe her drive - mercy being, of course, just one aspect of love.]
Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on Aug. 26, 1910, Teresa came to India in 1929 as a sister of the Loreto order. In 1946, she received what she described as a "call within a call" to found a new order dedicated to caring for the most unloved and unwanted, the "poorest of the poor" in the slums of her adopted city, Kolkata.
The Missionaries of Charity order went on to become one of the most well-known in the world, with more than 4,000 sisters in their trademark blue-trimmed white saris doing as Teresa instructed: "small things with great love."
At the order's Mother House in Kolkata, hundreds of people watched the Mass on TV and clapped with joy when Francis declared her a saint. They gathered around Teresa's tomb which was decorated with flowers, a single candle and a photo of the wrinkled saint.
"I am so proud to be from Kolkata," said Sanjay Sarkar, a high school student on hand for the celebration. "Mother Teresa belonged to Kolkata, and she has been declared a saint."...
Teresa's most famous critic, [the late] Christopher Hitchens, has accused her of taking donations from dictators — charges church authorities deny. Francis chose to emphasize her other dealings with the powerful.
"She made her voice heard before the powers of the world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crimes of poverty they themselves created," he said, repeating for emphasis "the crimes of poverty."
[Not that she ever sounded that sanctimonious. And I must check whether she ever used the term 'crimes of poverty' in the sense of actions committed by some that result in the mass poverty of others.]
Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity sisters had front-row seats at the Mass, alongside 1,500 homeless people and 13 heads of state or government and even royalty: [former] Queen Sofia of Spain. For the homeless, Francis offered a luncheon afterward in the Vatican auditorium, catered by a Neapolitan pizza maker who brought his own
While big, the crowd attending the canonization wasn't even half of the 300,000 who turned out for Mother Teresa's 2003 beatification celebrated by an ailing St. John Paul II. The low turnout suggested that financial belt-tightening and security fears in the wake of Islamic extremist attacks in Europe may have kept pilgrims away.
[Could it also be a sign that the Bergoglio effect is not all that positive, just that the Bergoglio-captive media refuses to acknowledge it? He brought the body of Padre Pio to the Vatican to help launch his Year of Mercy but the turnout, even for Italy's most popular saint, was as disappointing as today. Of course, it's convenient to blame security concerns.]
Those fears prompted a huge, 3,000-strong law enforcement presence to secure the area around the Vatican and close the airspace above. Many of those security measures have been in place for the duration of the Jubilee year, which officially ends in November.
While Francis is clearly keen to hold Teresa up as a model for her joyful dedication to the poor, he was also recognizing holiness in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony, sensing that God had abandoned her.
According to correspondence that came to light after she died in 1997, Teresa experienced what the church calls a "dark night of the soul" — a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced. In Teresa's case, it lasted for nearly 50 years — an almost unheard of trial.
For the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who spearheaded Teresa's saint-making campaign [and editor of that book of letters], the revelations were further confirmation of Mother Teresa's heroic saintliness.
"If I'm going to be a saint, I'm going to be a saint of darkness, and I'll be asking from heaven to be the light of those who are in darkness on Earth," she once wrote.
Teresa's Missionaries of Charity went on to become a global order of nuns, priests, brothers and lay co-workers. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and died in 1997. Soon thereafter, John Paul placed her on the fast-track for sainthood.
Francis has confessed that he was somewhat intimidated by Teresa, knowing well she was as tough as she was tender. He quipped during a 2014 visit to Albania that he would never have wanted her as his superior because she was so firm with her sisters.
But on Sunday, he admitted that even he would find it hard to call her "St. Teresa," since her tenderness was so maternal.
"Spontaneously, we will continue to say 'Mother Teresa,'" he said to applause.
And now, a personal aside:
I had the most unusual and unexpected spiritual experience today at the traditional Sunday Mass at Holy Innocents Church, when after the Mass, our parish priest, Fr. Miara, blessed each and every person who walked up to the communion rail (everyone in church did, of course) by touching our forehead or lips with a reliquary containing a first-class relic of St. Teresa of Kolkata on the day she was canonized, also anticipating her first feast day as saint tomorrow, Sept. 5, 19 years since she died. Her canonization portrait was displayed on the right side of the altar area, just in front of the communion rail.
Unworthy as I am, I had the unmerited grace to have been presented face to face, albeit briefly - in the course of journalistic assignments - to the two most famous and recent contemporary saints when they were alive: John Paul II on five occasions (thrice in Rome, twice in Manila), and Mother Teresa once (Manila in 1975 or 1976).
To my eternal regret, that single encounter was not what I had hoped it would be. She had come to Manila to inaugurate one of her missionary centers and paid a brief courtesy call on the Governor of Metro Manila (at the time, it was Imelda Marcos). As Mrs. Marcos always did, she presented everyone present in the room, including her official aide, to her guest of honor. The little nun seemed tired, but as she shook my hand, she said "God bless you".
My greatest disappointment was that during the few minutes I observed her in the room before we were sent out, so she and Mrs. Marcos could talk in private, I failed to sense the aura of holiness I expected, similar to what John Paul II radiated (apart from his personal charisma). Perhaps it was made worse because in those few minutes, she was quite formal and never smiled. In fact, I thought I glimpsed some bitterness - something I did not expect to feel in the presence of someone who, even then, was already considered a living saint.
I thought at the time that maybe it was her way of showing her disapproval of the Marcoses. Perhaps yes, that too. But in 2007, when her spiritual adviser released his book Mother Teresa: Come be my light - letters she wrote over a 66-year-period revealed that Mother Teresa did not feel the presence of God in her life for nearly 50 years, something, of course, no one had reason to even suspect!
From a review of the book in Sept. 2007:
Mother Mary Teresa spent 17 years in Calcutta, teaching with a group of uncloistered Sisters, before traveling to Darjeeling in 1946, at the age of 36. During that trip, she believed that Christ spoke to her and called her to work with the sick, the poor, and the dying. Mother Teresa was able to recount conversations she had with Christ, and even recounted her visions of him.
Based on her revelations to her Mother General, her confessor, and even the Pope, she was granted permission to begin her one-woman crusade. It was then that Mother Teresa felt Jesus leave her and stop speaking to her.
"Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ...
Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.
"
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
— Addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated
According to her letters, Mother Teresa felt Christ did not communicate with her for the next ten years. It wasn't until after the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, when Teresa prayed that God would give her some proof that he was "pleased with Society", that she felt the long years of darkness end.
But it was only to be for a brief time, no more than five weeks, before her period of spiritual darkness returned, and continued until her death on Sept. 5, 1997.
Perhaps the moment I glimpsed was an all-too-human reflection of her own 'despair' over what she felt to be the absence of God in her life. Yet, as the book review continues:
The absence of Christ's voice in her life never swayed her from her mission. She remained committed to him and the work he gave her, faithfully and without question.
The Rev. Matthew Lamb, chairman of the theology department at Ave Maria University, says this about the book's impact on society:
It may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor. It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone.
Mother Teresa lived a private Calvary that perhaps God only wills on rare privileged souls who are able to meet such a superhuman challenge to one's faith.
Needless to say, I have spent all these years since she died asking her forgiveness for the far-from-happy thoughts I had harbored about her. Since she was beatified, she has of course joined the pantheon of my patron saints - Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and Teresita de los Andes (of Chile) - all four being Carmelites, and not surprisingly, because each preceding saint influenced those who followed her example and became saints in their turn. Teresa of Kolkata also began as a sister in a missionary order dedicated to Our Lady (the Sisters of Loreto).
When my lips touched her reliquary today, I felt I have been forgiven by her.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/09/2016 23:48]