New Saints
Mother Teresa of Calcutta had said that “unborn children, whose lives are threatened, are ‘the poorest of the poor’”. That’s why “she bravely defended any new life with those outspoken words and straightforward deeds that are the brightest sign of the Prophets and Saints, who do not bow to anyone, except the Almighty, who are inwardly free because they are strong inside, and who do not bow to any fashion or to any last-minute idol, but reflect themselves in the sunlit awareness of the Gospel”. This was said by the secretary of state, cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the Holy Mass of Thanksgiving for the canonisation of Mother Teresa that is being officiated in St Peter’s Square. In his sermon, the cardinal spoke of Mother Teresa’s work, lingering on her defence of unborn children. “Each one of them – the cardinal said – actually depends, more than any other human being, on the love and care of the mother and the protection of society. A conceived child has nothing of its own, all its hopes and needs are in someone else’s hands. It carries inside a plan for its life and for its future, and asks to be welcomed and protected, so that it can become what it already is: one of us, that the Lord has conceived since all eternity to accomplish a great mission, that of ‘loving and being loved’, as Mother Teresa liked to repeat”. Because of this trait of her work, “in her we find – Parolin then concluded – that successful and inseparable combination of an heroic practice of charity and a clear proclamation of the truth”.
