World News for Students of English

08-09-2016 07:00

Tens of thousands of pilgrims came to St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Sunday. Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa of Calcutta a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate worked in the slums of the Indian city now called Calcutta and she became one of the most recognisable faces of the 20th century. The Pope admitted that people would spontaneously continue to call her Mother Teresa, not St Teresa.

Critics of Mother Teresa say that she did nothing to tackle the root causes of poverty, and they say that she accepted money from dictators for her work.

Nevertheless, Pope John Paul II put her on the route to canonisation two years after her death instead of the usual five years. The Catholic Church also credited her with two miracles. She died in 1997.

Difficult words: pilgrim (a person who travels somewhere for religious reasons), laureate (a person who is given a Nobel Prize), recognisable (known to people), tackle (fight), canonisation (officially make a dead person a saint).

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