Mother Teresa is already a saint: Lapierre

French author Dominique Lapierre, whose bestseller City of Joy helped make Mother Teresa a worldwide celebrity, says he never needed any Cat...

French author Dominique Lapierre, whose bestseller City of Joy helped make Mother Teresa a worldwide celebrity, says he never needed any Catholic Church declaration to know the frail nun from Kolkata was a saint. But it would be a beautiful tribute to her life serving the poor and dying if Mother Teresa, who was beatified by Pope John Paul on Sunday, was eventually canonised a saint, he said.

‘‘For me, she has been a saint for 25 years and she is a saint in the hearts of the poor of the world,’’ Lapierre said by telephone from his home in the south of France. ‘‘I don’t need the signature of some monsignor on a document to decide she is a saint,’’ said the Catholic Lapierre.

Prayers, processions across India

MUMBAI: Photographs, statues and paintings of the warm, wrinkled face with a beatific smile, under the now familiar blue bordered veil, adorned church spires, compound walls and walls of convents and missionary houses as scores of Christians all over the state joined the rest of the world in celebrating the beatification of Mother Teresa. In adjacent Vasai, in Thane district a huge six-foot tall lifesize statue of the Mother was unveiled by Bishop Thomas Dhabre at a special mass, attended by over 15,000 devotees.

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CHENNAI: Catholic churches all over Tamil Nadu on Sunday held special mass to mark the beatification of Mother Teresa and pray for the good health of Pope John Paul-II. Most Rev Aruldas James, Archbishop of Madras-Mylapore Archdiocese said that people all over the world were ‘‘exuberantly happy’’ that the ‘‘servant of the poor’’ Mother Teresa has now been beatified.
‘‘We are all immensely happy that she is now beatified and counted among the saints,’’ Archbishop Aruldas James said. (Agencies)

Still, he welcomed the Church’s honours for Mother Teresa as a just reward for a selfless life of love and inspiration and a source of satisfaction because of the further recognition it would bring to her achievements.

Beatification is the first step towards sainthood for Catholics and the short time it took for her to earn the title ‘‘blessed’’ — Mother Teresa only died in 1997 — hints she is on a fast track to the Church’s highest honour.

Lapierre, author of the international bestseller Is Paris Burning? and co-author of O Jerusalem and Freedom at Midnight, recalled his first meeting with Mother Teresa as a formative moment.

‘‘You could tell when you met her you were meeting a bomb,’’ he said. ‘‘She was explosive, she could change the world, move mountains.’’ After the success of Freedom at Midnight, Lapierre wanted to give some of his royalties to charity in India.

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So he got on a plane with $50,000 in his pocket and flew to Kolkata to see Mother Teresa.

‘‘I knew that she would tell me where I could use the money. I knew about her and that in her heart was an inventory of all the suffering of Kolkata,’’ he said.

‘‘She looked at me with her burning eyes and said, ‘It is God who sends you’.’’ The meeting was the start of a collaboration Lapierre said has helped millions of India’s poor.

Royalties from City of Joy, which has sold some eight million copies in about 30 languages and been turned into a major Hollywood film, have been poured back into Kolkata. (Reuters)

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