Crowds flock for Mother Teresa ceremony

  • 04/09/2016
A general view of Saint Peter's Square as Pope Francis leads a mass for the canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the Vatican (Reuters)
A general view of Saint Peter's Square as Pope Francis leads a mass for the canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the Vatican (Reuters)

Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun who worked on behalf of the poor in the Indian city of Kolkata for a half-century, has been declared a saint by Pope Francis on Sunday.

Nineteen years after her death at the age of 87, the title was given to Teresa in a ceremony in St Peter's Square attended by tens of thousands of admirers.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, the ethnic Albanian Teresa helped the poor in India for most of her life.

In 1950, she got permission to open her own order in Kolkata, the Missionaries of Charity, with the purpose of caring for those who had no one to look after them. Today the order has 4,500 members and runs homes for the homeless in 133 countries.

She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

DPA