Mother Teresa’s 13^th death anniversary

(September 4, 2010) The world is marking the 13^th death anniversary of Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkota today with celebrations and programmes, especially this year marking the 100 centenary of her birth. In Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, where Mother Teresa breathed her last on Sept. 5, 1997, Apostolic Nuncio to India, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio will celebrate Mass in St. Xavier’s College. In Rome a Holy Mass will be celebrated this evening at St. Gregory Church on the Celian Hill by Indian Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. In the Macedonaian capital, Skopje, where Mother Teresa was born of Albanian parents on August 26, 1910, a Mass will be celebrated by Bishop Kiro Stojanov in the Sacred Heart Cathedral. In Tirana the capital of neighbouring Albania, Archbishop Rrok Mirdita of Tirana-Durres, will celebrate Mass in St. Paul’s cathedral. Meanwhile, faithful from all the parishes of Kosovo are gathering in the capital Pristina in a national pilgrimage for the dedication of a new church to Mother Teresa. And in the United States, the saintly nun is being recognized for her humanitarian work with the release of a new 44-cent postage stamp at a ceremony at Washington's National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Mother Teresa won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the sick and destitute of India and other countries, was declared an honorary U.S. citizen in 1996.