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‘OUR ANGEL GUARDIAN’: Mother Teresa will be canonized tomorrow by Pope Francis, reflecting the extraordinary example she set by caring for the poor.
‘OUR ANGEL GUARDIAN’: Mother Teresa will be canonized tomorrow by Pope Francis, reflecting the extraordinary example she set by caring for the poor.
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Pope Francis’ decision to declare Mother Teresa a saint tomorrow — just two decades after her death — reflects the extraordinary example she set by caring for some of the world’s neediest, people she described as “the poorest of the poor,” according to one local theologian.

“She was a woman of such extraordinary witness to Christian faith, especially to care for the poor, the abandoned, the downtrodden,” said Thomas Groome, a Boston College professor of theology. “Pope Francis wanted to raise her up as a model for other people to follow, to show that this is the responsibility of people of faith to care for the poor.”

The Roman Catholic Church typically waits much longer before declaring someone a saint, but in Mother Teresa’s case, “there was no need to wait for further proof,” Groome said. “There’s no doubt she’s a model for Christians.”

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, she joined the Loreto order of nuns in 1928. She was traveling from the city then called Calcutta to Darjeeling in 1946 when she decided to start the Missionaries of Charity order. Since its establishment in 1950, the order has set up hundreds of shelters that care for the poor worldwide.

Her work, which began in Kolkata’s festering slums and spread across the world, won Mother Teresa the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. It also won her immense love in her adopted home. When she died on Sept. 5, 1997, at age 87, hundreds of thousands of local people poured out into the streets to bid farewell.

The tiny, stooped nun had her critics. They said she romanticized poverty, and they questioned the quality of care in her homes and clinics, among other accusations.

But on the eve of her canonization, the prevailing feeling among those in Kolkata who knew Mother Teresa is joy.

Gautam Lewis, a polio victim she rescued after he was abandoned by his parents as a child, has long believed in the beloved nun’s sainthood.

“She used to consider all of us as her children,” said Lewis, who has a pronounced limp and walks with a crutch. “She was our angel ?guardian.”

At 7, Lewis was adopted from an orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity and moved first to New Zealand and later to England. Now 39, he runs a flying school for people with disabilities in the United Kingdom. But Mother Teresa remains the most important influence on his life.

In 1988, Swapan Pal found shelter in a home where the Missionaries of Charity cared for people like him who suffered from leprosy and were shunned.

“After being diagnosed as a leprosy patient, I became totally depressed and thought my world had come to an end, but the love and care here has given me a new life,” the 50-year-old said. He was cured and eventually met his wife at the shelter. Both now work at a rehabilitation center that is part of the home.

Herald wires services contributed to this report.