BY GREGORY A. HALL and SUE KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A year after Mother Teresa's death, the Calcutta nun known for helping the poorest of the poor is being memorialized as if she were already a saint.
![[Teresa]](/editions/1998/09/05/teresa_180x109.jpg)
Mother Teresa greets a child in 1981 during a celebration at St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati.
(File photo)
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An exhibit featuring sculptures of her opens next week at the Cathedral Art Gallery in Covington. A new school in Monroe, Ohio, bears her name. Farther away, a living testament to her work continues in a tiny southeastern Kentucky town where she established a mission 16 years ago.
Mother Teresa died at the age of 87 in Calcutta after a long illness. Her funeral drew almost as much attention as the service days earlier for Princess Diana.
The funeral heaped attention on the order Mother Teresa founded, the Missionaries of Charity. The group of 4,000 nuns has added 20 new centers and will have 614 homes around the world by year's end, thanks to Mother Teresa's successor, Sister Nirmala, a Hindu-born Indian convert to Roman Catholicism.
The growth, however, is not across the board. Numbers are declining for religious orders in the Diocese of Covington, said Sister Joan Dohmen, director of religious.
Unlike the ceremonies and flowers that pervaded the news on the recent anniversary of Diana's death, the anniversary of the nun's passing is being marked more solemnly -- as supporters say Mother Teresa would have wanted it.
The Vatican is planning a public tribute today, including a memorial Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, a TV special from St. Peter's Square and a homage from Pope John Paul II.
The Roman Catholic Church's tribute offers everything but the speeded-up sainthood that her followers say the extraordinary nun of Calcutta deserves.
Mother Teresa's sisters are beginning to collect documentation of miracles she worked, part of the process that could lead to Mother Teresa's formal canonization.
Many people have canonized her in their own ways.
In Monroe, the 20 kindergartners at Mother Teresa Catholic Elementary School sat at the bottom of the hallway steps and looked up Friday.
There, prominently displayed on the wall was a portrait of their 2-week-old school's spiritual leader, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. On the eve of the anniversary of her death, students learned about and celebrated Mother Teresa's life.
"We talked about her life, how she loved people and worked with the poor," said Sister Anne Schulz, the students' teacher and principal. "We focused on Mother Teresa's life in our prayer service." Students learned that when Mother Teresa started her order, she chose blue material for the sisters' habits -- not because she liked blue but because that happened to be the color of the cheapest material she could find.
Honoring Mother Teresa, the students' uniforms are blue and white.
Sister Schulz said she is not bothered by the relative lack of attention paid to Mother Teresa.
"She was a quiet person who didn't want a lot of recognition," Sister Schulz said.
Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz was working on a religious piece last year when he heard the news of Mother Teresa's death on the radio.
"The thought that went into my head right away was this is something as big as St. Francis dying," he said.
That led the 28-year-old to create two depictions of Mother Teresa, one of which will be placed in Calcutta's Premdan House, which Mother Teresa founded to serve homeless men and women.
The first cast of that sculpture will be on display at Covington's Cathedral gallery from Sept. 11 to Oct. 31.
The sculpture shows Mother Teresa with her hands together in prayer and her eyes looking peacefully into the distance. Mr. Schmalz said he wanted something that would be uplifting for the poor people of Calcutta.
Another sculpture shows starving, gaunt children surrounding her, with her eyes staring directly at the viewer. This, Mr. Schmalz said, is for people in richer countries to see. He calls it a confrontation. "Here in Western society, to show the realities of the poverty . . . I feel is so important," Mr. Schmalz said. "It'll make people think."
In Jenkins, Ky., the town on the Virginia border where Mother Teresa established her first rural mission in the United States, the remembrances are simpler.
"She was an inspiration to all of us," said Jenkins resident Narcie Toth, who always carries an autographed picture Mother Teresa gave to her late husband.
Thoughts will return to Mother Teresa this morning as a Mass is said in her honor the St. George Church in Jenkins.
That's nothing new for Masses there, Mrs. Toth said. "We always pray for Mother Teresa."
![[Teresa]](/editions/1998/09/05/teresa_550x334.jpg)