Already regarded as a saint by her followers, Mother Teresa was officially canonized on Sunday, 4 September in Rome, by Pope Francis, and she is now known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Mother established the Missionaries of Charity, a family of Sisters, Brothers, Fathers, and co-workers, in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in 1950. By 1997, the Missionaries of Charity had almost 4000 Sisters working in 610 foundations, in 450 centers in 123 countries across the six continents.
Mother Teresa’s first visit to the U.S. was in 1982 when she visited three campuses: Harvard University, Georgetown University, and Thomas Aquinas College, where she served as that year’s Commencement Speaker and received the college’s highest honor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion.
The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx, New York. By 1984, it had 19 establishments all over the country. On Christmas Eve of 1985, Mother Teresa opened “Gift of Love” in New York, her first house for AIDS patients. In the coming years, this home was followed by others, in the United States and elsewhere, devoted specifically for those with AIDS. In 1994, she spoke passionately against abortion in her address to 3,000 guests at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington D.C. February 5.
Mother Teresa’s 1995 visit to the U.S. ended in Mahanoy City, PA, where a branch of her Missionaries of Charity had just been established at St. Joseph Church.
At 9:30 pm, on 5 September, Mother Teresa died at the Motherhouse, Calcutta. The Government of India honored her with a state funeral on 13 September: her body was taken in procession on a gun carriage, that had also borne the bodies of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, through the streets of Calcutta.
Navin Chawla, a biographer of Mother Teresa and a former Chief Election Commissioner of India, says: Mother Teresa’s greatest miracle was her life itself. Armed only with an abundance of faith, she created a multinational organization that served her special constituency of the ‘poorest of the poor’.
India’s Department of Post has released a new commemorative postage stamp, on the event. A specially designed cancellation featuring the Mother on a silk envelope that includes a five-rupee commemorative coin issued by the Indian government in 2010 to mark her centenary birth celebrations, is shown below:
