Mother Teresa’s centenary celebrations start

(Aug.24,2010) A year of celebrations for the birth centenary of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata was launched at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Blessed Teresa of Kolkata in Baruipur, eastern India, on Monday, Aug. 23. The cathedral was appropriate for the occasion because it is the only one in the world to be co-dedicated in her name.
Bishop Salvadore Lobo of Baruipur, who knew Blessed Teresa since 1968, opened the festivities with a Mass concelebrated with 13 priests. The Mass was attended by some 500 faithful. The Bishop told them that “Mass was very central to Mother Teresa’s life and she attended every morning before going out to work.” Bishop Lobo urged the gathering to “become channels of peace, as Mother Teresa herself exhorted the Missionaries of Charity (MC) nuns to be. Each one of you can be ambassadors of peace and stop violence in a world that is riddled with so much conflict,” he said.
Blessed Teresa founded the MC congregation in 1950 to serve the poorest of the poor. The celebrations are set to continue with novenas and spiritual renewal programs in all the diocese’s 22 parishes and 85 chapels. Although Blessed Teresa’s actual birth date is Aug.26, it was decided to bring the occasion forward to Aug. 23, so it could be synchronized with an event that takes place in eastern Indian Kolkata city on that date.
Bishop Lobo, along with Cardinal Telesphore Toppo of Ranchi and Archbishop Lucas Sircar of Calcutta, are expected to join the event at the MC headquarters in Kolkata, where she was buried after her death on Sept. 5, 1997. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003. Beatification, which bestows the title “blessed,” is one step away from sainthood.