The Baltimore Basilica, where Saint Mother Teresa visited two decades ago, celebrated this special event. No, really. The Pope just granted her sainthood.
Mother was declared a Saint by Pope Francis before over 1.20 lakh devotees at the Vatican on Sunday, becoming one of the fastest Saints in the history of the Catholic Church.
Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, Teresa came to India in 1929 as a sister of the Loreto order.
Teresa's most famous critic, Christopher Hitchens, has accused her of taking donations from dictators - charges church authorities deny.
"Declare and define blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint", proclaimed Pope Francis in front of thousands gathered in Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City on Sunday.
"Everything she did gave an example to the entire world", 17-year-old student Massimiliano D'Aniello said, "little gestures made with so much love are what's important". In most cases, two miracles are required to become a saint.
"She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity", he said. With such a high number of people invited to the lunch, the pizza was prepared by a staff of almost 20 people who brought three of their own mobile ovens to cook in.
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Mother Teresa prayed at the Baltimore Basilica in 1996.
Best known as Mother Teresa, she reported having divine visions while still living in Skopje, at the Sacred Heart of Jesus church, where a memorial home in her honor now stands.
The newly sainted Teresa has a strong presence in Baltimore. He said that by canonizing her, Francis is recognizing that she not only shared the material poverty of the poor but the spiritual poverty of those who feel "unloved, unwanted, uncared for".
Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity - the order founded by the Mother to minister to the poorest of the poor and the infirm - and Roman catholic priests lit candles and held an early morning mass before her tomb in the congregation's headquarters Mother House.
"If I'm going to be a saint, I'm going to be a saint of darkness, and I'll be asking from heaven to be the light of those who are in darkness on Earth", she once wrote.
Throughout the course of her life, she received a Nobel Peace Prize, an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
