Pope John Paul II salutes the Sisters of Charity, nuns of the order set up by Mother Teresa, as he leaves St Peter's Square at the end of the beatification ceremony.
Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, will henceforth be known as the Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata, one step away from sainthood.
Normally, the process of canonisation in the Roman Catholic Church takes decades, even centuries, but Mother Teresa had a special intervener in the Pope himself, who waived the customary five-year period for the sainthood process to begin.
To attain the first stage of sainthood, beatification, there must be one proven posthumous miracle attributed to the candidate. Mother Teresa is credited with the miraculous cure of Monica Besra, a tribal woman from West Bengal, who had a stomach tumour.
A second miracle must be authenticated for the canonisation.