The canonization of Mother Teresa on Sunday, September 4, will advance the unusual agenda of Pope Francis for the Catholic Church.
The Albanian nun Mother Teresa will be canonized on Sunday, September 4 — a moment when she will be declared as a Saint — to be led by the Pope, Francis.
According to the officials of the church, the canonization of Mother Teresa will advance the agenda of Pope Francis for the church.
The ceremony on Sunday, according to the Vatican, will highlight the pope’s ideal of a “poor church for the poor” that pays special attention to the developing world.
Aside from this, the celebration will also offer the pope a rare opportunity to unify Catholics focused on social-justice concerns with those who follow Mother Teresa in championing some of the church’s most controversial moral teachings.
Among the Catholic devotees, canonizations have an important educational function for the church. Devotees believe saints are held to embody certain “heroic virtues” that the faithful are called to look as a model in daily living.
Mother Teresa’s canonization is also an avenue to be a moment of unity between two wings of the Catholic Church that are often at odds: those emphasizing social justice and those challenging the mores of modern secular culture.
Rev. Alexander Lucie-Smith of Britain’s Catholic Herald magazine said, “Pope Francis is living in the age of Mother Teresa,”, who called the new saint the defining figure of modern church history.
As a widely hailed saint during her lifetime for her piety and devotion to the poor, Mother Teresa won high recognitions, including the Nobel Peace Prize.
At the age of 87, Mother Teresa died in 1997 in India. Even over 2% of the population of India is Christian, the country honored her with a state funeral.
Then Pope John Paul II expedite the canonization process in her case and declared her “blessed,”bestowing the highest honor short of sainthood in just six years, which is a very short time, compared to others. Her beatification ceremony was able to gather 300,000 people to Rome.
More than 300, 000 people are also expected at the Mass on Sunday during the canonization, where Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj is expected to attend.