VATICAN CITY -- Under extra tight security, Pope Francis climaxed Sunday the elevation to sainthood of Mother Teresa at a special Mass in St Peter's Square, telling 120,000 pilgrims and faithful that the Albanian nun had fought to make the powerful take responsibility for “the crime of poverty.”

 Tens of thousands of Catholic faithful were gathered in and around the wide Via della Conciliazione leading into the Square under sunny skies for the canonization of the controversial ‘saint of the poor,’ one of the main spiritual events of the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy being celebrated by the Argentine pontiff. The service was beamed live to millions around the world on television. However total attendance was only some 120,000, including 100,000 ticketholders in the square, the Vatican said, less than the throng of 300,000 who came to the Vatican for Mother Teresa’s beatification, the first step to sainthood.

 “Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy,” the pope told the throng in his homily, “making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded.”

 In a strong rebuttal of critics of the saint’s work in Calcutta and elsewhere, the pontiff, dressed in white and gold vestments while under a canopy on the porch of St Peter’s Basilica, said that “she bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity.”

“She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created,” the pope continued.

Paying tribute to Mother Teresa’s opposition to abortion in line with Catholic doctrine, Francis said “she was committed to defending life, ceaselessly proclaiming that ‘the unborn are the weakest, the smallest, the most vulnerable.’”

 The pontiff added that “Her mission to the urban and existential peripheries remains for us today an eloquent witness to God’s closeness to the poorest of the poor. Today I pass on this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life to the whole world of volunteers: may she be your model of holiness!” 

 “Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer. In this way, we will open up opportunities of joy and hope for our many brothers and sisters who are discouraged and who stand in need of understanding and tenderness.”

 After the Mass the pope was delivering his weekly Angelus address and was to tour St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile jeep. 

In the vast Paul VI hall in the tiny Vatican state, Francis was joining 1500 street people for lunch. The homeless and poor people were bussed overnight to Rome from convents of Mother Teresa’s order around Italy to attend the canonization and a lunch of Neapolitan pizza, coca cola and ice cream, which was being served by 250 nuns and 50 monks. 

The food was being cooked in three mobile ovens by 20 chefs from a Naples pizza restaurant, Vatican officials said.