US postal stamp to honour Mother Teresa on her birth centenary

(January 8, 2009) Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata will be honoured by the United States Postal Service with a postage stamp on her birth centenary this year. “With this stamp, the U.S. Postal Service recognizes Mother Teresa, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work,” the US Postal Service said in a release that listed the nun among new postages to be issued in 2010. It recalled that the world renowned nun, an honorary U.S. citizen, “served the sick and destitute of India and the world for nearly 50 years.” The stamp, featuring a portrait of the Albanian-born nun. is expected to be issued on August 26, her 100th birth anniversary. Born of Albanian parents on Aug. 26, 1910 in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa arrived in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, eastern India in 1929 as a missionary with the Loreto nuns. In 1948 she left her convent to devote herself completely to the city’s poor and two year later established the Missionaries of Charity congregation. Based in Kolkata she worked globally for the poor. Mother Teresa, who took Indian citizenship in 1948, died in Kolkata on Sept. 5, 1997, at the age of 87 and is buried there. The Catholic Church declared her Blessed in 2003, which is a step away from sainthood.