For those who revered her, Mother Teresa\u2019s elevation to the Catholic sainthood on Sunday came not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n
The diminutive nun whose journey from a corner of the Ottoman Empire to the slums of India made her one of the most famous women in the world was regarded by many as a saint during her lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cSaint of the Gutters\u201d and \u201cAngel of Mercy\u201d were among the sobriquets she picked up over the course of nearly four decades working with the poor of Kolkata and building her Missionaries of Charity order into a global force.Those who knew Mother Teresa best, describe her as someone who loved fun, chocolate and icecream.<\/p>\n
But there was another school of thought. Australian feminist Germaine Greer called her a \u201creligious imperialist\u201d who preyed on the most vulnerable in the name of harvesting souls for Jesus.<\/p>\n
And to her most ferocious critic, the British polemicist Christopher Hitchens, she was \u201ca fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud\u201d.But Mother Teresa was always far more revered than reviled. Millions acclaimed her as an icon of Christian charity and a global symbol of anti-materialism and worthwhile self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n
India, her adopted homeland, took her to its heart. \u201cIt is natural for every Indian to take pride in Mother Teresa\u2019s canonisation,\u201d Prime Minister Narendra Modi said earlier this week.<\/p>\n
On her death in 1997, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II predicted Mother Teresa would \u201ccontinue to live on in the hearts of all those who have been touched by her selfless love\u201d.<\/p>\n
The private Mother Teresa was a more complex personality than she appeared to the world. Behind her gaunt, wrinkled face lay a troubled soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For those who revered her, Mother Teresa\u2019s elevation to the Catholic sainthood on Sunday came not a moment too soon. The diminutive nun whose journey from a corner of the Ottoman Empire to the slums of India made her one of the most famous women in the world was regarded by many as a saint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[4152,4154,2670,4153],"class_list":["post-10100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politicalnews","category-top-stories","tag-angel-of-mercy","tag-british-polemicist-christopher-hitchens","tag-mother-teresa","tag-saint-of-the-gutters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/mother-teresa-.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}