Mass Honoring Mother Teresa's Canonization Celebrated at Southland Cathedral

LOS ANGELES, CA - A special Mass honoring Mother Teresa on the occasion of her canonization in Rome was celebrated Sunday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez.

The 3:30 p.m. Mass featured a first-class relic of the nun who cared for hundreds of thousands of destitute and homeless poor in Kolkata (then Calcutta), India.

Following the Mass, Gomez blessed and opened a chapel dedicated to Mother Teresa, where photographs and stories of her visits to Los Angeles will be displayed, as well as the relic, pieces of her hair in the form of a cross, for public veneration.

Mother Teresa's canonization in Vatican City by Pope Francis came one day before the 19th anniversary of her death.

In his column in the Archdiocese's publication Angelus News, Gomez called Mother Teresa "one of my favorite saints."

"She is witness to mercy and holiness, and one who inspires me in my spiritual life and in my ministry of service," Gomez wrote.

Mother Teresa's "humble works of love, done for people who were abandoned and forsaken in a remote city in India, became a sign for the whole world of God's tender and merciful love," Gomez wrote.

"Mother Teresa gave up her privileged position and all her possessions to live as one of the world's poor and forgotten and to bring them the light of Christ and the love of God," Gomez wrote.

"Her message to the rest of us was direct -- we should seek our salvation in the God who comes to us in the poor and the outcast. We should seek Jesus at the margins of society in what she called 'his distressing disguise.' "

-- City News Service, photo via screen shot