Mother Teresa declared a saint by Pope Francis

Vatican: Pope Francis has declared Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun who worked for the poor in the Indian city of Kolkata for half-a-century, a saint during a ceremony in St Peter's Square attended by tens of thousands of people on Sunday. Mother Teresa will now be known as a saint nineteen years after she died at the age of 87.

Thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter's Square applauded as Mother Teresa also known as the "saint of the gutters" in her lifetime was officially promoted to join the church's more than 10,000 saints.
  She was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, the ethnic Albanian Teresa helped served the poor in India for most part of her life.

Mother Teresa who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, got approval to open her own order in Kolkata in 1950, the Missionaries of Charity, with the purpose of caring for those who had no one to look after them.

Today the order has 4,500 members and runs homes for the homeless in 133 countries around the world.

Former Pope, John Paul II bent the Vatican rules in other to fast-track Mother Teresa to sainthood two years after she died in 1997, a process which usually start at least five years after the candidate's death.
 
Around 70 cardinals, 400 bishops and 1700 priests, and foreign officials attended the ceremony.

The highlight of the ceremony was the canonization rite, when Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Cardinal Angelo Amato presented the request to canonise Mother Teresa.

Responding in Latin, Pope Francis then declared her a saint.

One of the sections closest to the altar was reserved for 1,500 homeless people, who were offered pizza for lunch by Pope Francis.