Pope in North Macedonia: Saint
Mother Teresa a witness to God’s love
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| Pope Francis prays before the statue of Mother Teresa in Skopje, North Macedonia(Vatican Media) |
On his one-day Apostolic Journey to North Macedonia, Pope
Francis stops to pray at the Mother Teresa Memorial House in the Saint’s
birthplace of Skopje.
By Vatican News
When Mother Teresa was born, the city of Skopje was part of
the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. Today it is the capital of North
Macedonia. In 1963, an earthquake destroyed the church of the Sacred Heart
where she was baptized. But in 2009 a futuristic structure called the Mother
Teresa Memorial House was erected on the spot.
Pope Francis visited the Memorial House soon after his
arrival in North Macedonia on Tuesday morning. Before greeting a number of poor
people assisted by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, the Pope prayed
before the relics of the Saint in the chapel.
Pope Francis’ Prayer
Pope Francis began by thanking God for giving us the life and
charism of Saint Mother Teresa: “You called her to bear witness to your love
among the poorest of the poor”, he prayed.
“She was able to do much good to those in greatest need, for
she saw in every man and woman the face of your Son”. Mother Teresa “became the
prayerful cry of the poor and of all those who hunger and thirst for justice”,
said Pope Francis.
In the city where she was born and where she lived the first
18 years of her life, the Pope turned to Saint Mother Teresa: “Here you began
to see and meet people in need, the poor and the helpless”, he said.
“Here you learned from your parents to love those in
greatest need and to help them. Here, in the silence of the church, you heard
the call of Jesus to follow him as a religious in the missions”.
Mother Teresa’s intercession
“Here in this place”, prayed Pope Francis, “we ask you to
intercede with Jesus, that we too may obtain the grace to be watchful and
attentive to the cry of the poor, those deprived of their rights, the sick, the
outcast and the least of our brothers and sisters”.
The Pope continued by asking Jesus to grant us the grace “to
see Him in the eyes of all who look to us in their need…to become signs of love
and hope in our own day, when so many are poor, abandoned, marginalized and migrants”.
Pope Francis concluded by asking Saint Mother Teresa to
“pray for this city, for this people, for its Church and for all those who wish
to follow Christ… To follow Him, who came not to be served but to serve”.
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