Pope Francis has declared Mother Teresa a saint, honouring the nun who cared for the world's most destitute as an icon for a Catholic Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor and wounded souls.
Applause erupted in St Peter's Square even before Francis finished pronouncing the rite of canonisation at the start of the Mass in St Peter's Square.
In his homily, Pope Francis praised Mother Teresa as the merciful saint who defended the lives of the unborn, sick and abandoned — and who shamed world leaders for the "crimes of poverty they themselves created."
