In a three-hour ceremony rich in colour and pomp, and attended by more than 300,000 people crammed into St Peter's Square and surrounds, ailing Pope John Paul II yesterday presided over the beatification of one of the Catholic Church's best-loved daughters, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
As first Gregorian chant and then Indian Aratil music soared out across St Peter's Square, and the massed ranks of more than 150 cardinals gathered round the Pope, one could only wonder what the little Albanian nun, the so-called "Saint of the Gutters", would have made of it all.
Perhaps this second Vatican set-piece occasion in four days, following the Pope's silver jubilee celebration on Thursday, might have seemed too pompous for Mother Teresa. Yet, there were plenty of sisters from the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in 1950, to remind pilgrims that her life was one of service to the poor, the hungry and the dying.
Also underlining the nature of Mother Teresa's life was the presence of some 3,000 of Rome's "down and outs", all of whom afterwards attended a lunch with the Pope in Paul VI hall.
While the figure of Mother Teresa has sometimes prompted controversy - she was accused of proselytism, of receiving funds from unsavoury figures such as "Baby Doc" Duvalier of Haiti and of vigorously propagating Catholic teaching on contraception - Pope John Paul II has never had such doubts.
Not only did he personally fast-track her beatification following her death in 1997, he even wrote to bishops proposing to skip the beatification stage and go straight to canonisation. This idea was, however, subsequently abandoned.
Calling her an "icon of the good Samaritan", the Pope said yesterday that she had been "a great servant of the poor, the church and of the whole world.
"She had chosen to be not just the least, but to be the servant of the least. As a real mother to the poor, she bent down to those suffering various forms of poverty. Her greatness lies in her ability to give without counting the cost. Her life was a radical living and a bold proclamation of the Gospel."
Among the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual crowd was a group of 14 Irish volunteers, all of whom had worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta.
For Miriam Doran from Dublin, Mother Teresa is a figure worthy of eventual sainthood. "She was a living saint. It's not fair to say that she proselytised. She used to say to people, be a better Muslim, be a better Hindu. We saw her at work, out with us on Christmas Day feeding 2,000 hungry people. For a small woman, she was a giant."
The Pope appeared to hold up well, notwithstanding the strains imposed on his obvious ill-health by the lengthy ceremony.
Although he did not read his own homily, he did read the Angelus address and, after the ceremony, greeted a lengthy line of dignitaries before doing a "popemobile" tour of the packed square.