To celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa India Post releases postal stamp

To celebrate the canonisation of Mother Teresa as a saint, India Post on sunday released a commemorative postage stamp on her. Union Minister of State for Communications Manoj Sinha unveiled the postage stamp during a ceremony at the Divine Child High School here, an official statement said.

Bishop Agnelo Gracias and Sister Rubella, a representative from Missionaries of Charity, were present at the ceremony.

Teresa, who worked for the destitute in Kolkata and became a global icon of Christian charity, was declared a saint by Pope Francis at the Vatican on Sunday. Her elevation to Roman Catholicism's celestial pantheon came in a canonisation mass in St Peter's square in the Vatican that was presided over by Pope Francis in the presence of 100,000 pilgrims.

"For the honour of the Blessed Trinity. we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) to be a Saint and we enroll her among the Saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole Church," the pontiff said in Latin.

The ceremony came a day before the 19th anniversary of Teresa's death in Kolkata, the Indian city where she spent nearly four decades tending to the poorest of the poor. Teresa spent all her adult life in India, first teaching, then tending to the dying poor.

It was in the latter role, at the head of her now worldwide order that Teresa became one of the most famous women on the planet.

Born to Kosovan Albanian parents in Skopje - then part of the Ottoman empire, now the capital of Macedonia - she won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize and was revered around the world as a beacon for the Christian values of self-sacrifice and charity.