Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption As the Pope declared Mother Teresa a saint, cheers rang out from the crowd of thousands in St Peter's Square

Mother Teresa, revered for her work with the poor in India, has been proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis in a ceremony at the Vatican. Vatican City (AP) — Elevating the “saint of the gutters” to one of the Catholic Church’s highest honors, Pope Francis on Sunday praised Mother Teresa for her radical dedication to society’s outcasts and her courage in shaming world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created.”

An estimated 120,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square for the canonization ceremony, less than half the number who turned out for her 2003 beatification. 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.” For the newly-sainted Teresa, he said, “mercy was the salt which gave flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering.”

She was an example to volunteers around the world, he said. “Mercy, forgiveness, good works: It is the heart of a mother for the poor.”

While big, the crowd attending the canonization wasn’t even half of the 300,000 who turned out for Mother Teresa’s 2003 beatification celebrated by an ailing St. John Paul II. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A woman who said she experienced Mother Teresa's first "miracle" describes what happened

Born in 1910 to ethnic Albanian parents, Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu grew up in what is now the Macedonian capital, Skopje, but was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Mother Teresa died in 1997 and was beatified - the first step towards becoming a saint - in 2003, after her first cure - of a woman with an ovarian tumour - was recognised by the Church. Born to Kosovar Albanian parents in Skopje -- then part of the Ottoman empire, now the capital of Macedonia -- she won the 1979 Nobel peace prize and was revered around the world as a beacon for the Christian values of self-sacrifice and charity.
Mother Teresa, known for working with the desperately poor, is canonized in a ceremony at the Vatican.