Pope Francis proclaimed Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday before a crowd of more than 100,000 in St. Peter’s Square, bestowing the Catholic Church’s highest honor on one of the most widely admired public figures in recent history.

 

“We declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole church,” the pope said in a ceremony at the start of Mass, provoking applause from the congregation gathered under sunny skies.

 

Behind him, on the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, hung a banner-sized portrait of Mother Teresa, one of the late 20th century’s most recognizable faces even beyond the ranks of Catholics.

 

Born to an ethnic Albanian family in what is now Macedonia, the diminutive Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with 12 followers in Kolkata, India. The order now runs hospices, homeless shelters and other services for the destitute in 139 countries.

 

Mother Teresa was widely hailed as a saint even during her lifetime and won many worldly accolades, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Only 18 months after her death in 1997, St. John Paul II cut short the usual five-year waiting period to start the canonization process. He beatified her, bestowing the church’s highest honor short of sainthood, in 2003.

 

Her proclamation as a saint occurred one day before the 19th anniversary of her death. That anniversary, Sept. 5, will now be her feast day in the calendar of the Catholic Church around the world.


 

For the church, saints are exemplars of “heroic virtue” whose divine salvation is an article of faith, and Catholics are encouraged to pray to them to intercede on their behalf with God.

 

The congregation in the square on Sunday, notably smaller than the 300,000 who had attended Mother Teresa’s beatification in 2003, included 20 official foreign delegations, including those led by Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Queen Sofía of Spain.

 

There were also 1,500 residents of homeless shelters run by the Missionaries of Charity in various Italian cities, who had been transported to the event overnight by bus. The Vatican said the pope would be treating them to pizza for lunch in the papal audience hall following the Mass.

 

Fernando Fazio, 56 years old, said had traveled to Rome with his son and sister from Madrid, where he regularly volunteers for Missionaries of Charity, distributing food to needy families.

 

“Mother Teresa and her extreme generosity to the whole world and to the neediest is the perfect example of the mercy of God, which all of us should follow if we are Christian,” Mr. Fazio said. “I am only sorry I never met her in person.”

 

On Saturday morning, the pope had told a smaller gathering in St. Peter’s Square that the next day they would have the “joy to see Mother Teresa proclaimed a saint. She deserves it!”

 

The pope didn’t stress the uniqueness of the nun who had become a global celebrity and icon of charity. Instead, he held up her as one of the “vast array of men and women who, by their holiness of life, have made the love of Christ visible” and thus set an example for all Catholics.