Pope beatifies Mother Teresa before huge crowd

Pope John Paul II greets a nun of the Missionaries of Charity during the beatification ceremony of Mother Teresa in Saint Peter's Square yesterday. Pilgrims, tourists, Catholics and members of other religions streamed into the Vatican on Sunday to see Pope John Paul II put Mother Teresa of Kolkata on the road to sainthood. PHOTO: Reuters

"With our apostolic authority, we grant that the venerable servant of God Teresa of Kolkata shall from now on be called blessed," declared the pontiff, a longtime friend of the nun who died in 1997 at the age of 87.

Applause and cheering broke out in the crowd of more than 150,000 and a large tapestry showing a smiling Mother Teresa was unveiled from a balcony of Christendom's largest church.

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The crowd, made up of Catholics and non-Catholic admirers, packed St Peter's Square and filled the broad Via della Conciliazione leading from the Vatican to the River Tiber.

The ethnic Albanian sister, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, tended the sick and dying of Kolkata's slums for decades with the Missionaries of Charity order she founded.

Many of her nuns in their blue-trimmed white saris stood out in the vast crowd, where a special section for thousands of Rome's homeless and downtrodden was reserved close to the elevated altar where the pope said the beatification Mass.

"Mother Teresa was for us great because she was not just a daughter of our homeland, Albania. She gave up our flag and every other flag for one flag, the flag of love," said Dod Brokshi, an Albanian who came with his family.

"Coming here means a new renaissance for us," he said, waving the red Albanian flag emblazoned with a black eagle.

While she never hid her Christian inspiration, the nun won admiration from Hindus, Muslims and other non-Catholics around the world.

"It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbor... How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live?" she said in her 1979 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

A frail figure, she became the world's most famous nun for decades of work among the sick and dying, the homeless and the lepers in the Indian city of Calcutta, one of the most impoverished on earth.

She launched her Missionaries of Charity order in 1950 with only 12 nuns. It has grown to 4,500 sisters in 133 countries running homes, schools and hospices for the poor and dying.