During a consistory of cardinals held a few months ago, Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa of Calcutta a saint. The canonisation ceremony will be held on September 4, 2016 at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, during the Jubilee of Mercy.

Mother Teresa was the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation which by 2012 had 4,500 sisters in 133 countries. They established hospices and homes for sick people with HIV or AIDS, tuberculosis and leprosy. They also opened kitchens, clinics and schools along with counselling programmes. The members of this congregation take the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience and they take a fourth vow to dedicate themselves wholly to the ‘poorest of the poor’.

Mother Teresa’s thin figure, her fragile body bent with tiring work and her wrinkled face became known worldwide.

Anyone who met her, even once, could not forget the brightness of her smile reflected by her immense love.

Although she had been active, Mother Teresa was also contemplative at the same time. In her there was idealism and concreteness, pragmatism and utopia. She liked to define herself as “a small pencil of God”, a small instrument in his simple hands.

Mother Teresa died in Calcutta on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. In 1999, the process of her beatification was opened, three years before planned, although for many people she was already a saint.

On October 19, 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified her. Her message can be applied today too: that everyone seeks his Calcutta, which is also found in the streets of our western cities.

“You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have eyes to see, wherever people are not loved, not wanted by anyone, marginalised and forgotten by everyone”.