“Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.”

Mother Teresa of Calcutta greeting journalists after arriving in Rome from New Delhi in May 1997. Photos: Reuters

At face value, these are a few simple words. But when stringed together in sentence – and on a second and third reading – they drip like a drop of water, rippling with kindness and compassion.

In much the same way, St Teresa of Calcutta’s life and love still ripple, two decades after her death.

The world today marks the 20th anniversary of her death. Mother Teresa, a devout Catholic, abandoned everything to follow Jesus into the dirtiest of India’s slums and serve him among the poorest of the poor.

She lived her life at a very deep spiritual level and was admired by millions throughout the world.

Mother Teresa was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia. At 16, she became a nun and moved to India in 1929, where she formed her order, the Missionaries of Charity, in 1950.

She accepted those who were not favoured with acceptance; those who were often treated as outsiders in their own communities. She had an endless love for the starving, the crippled, the impoverished, the diseased and the dying.

She lived her life at a deep spiritual level

“St Teresa of Calcutta will always be remembered and venerated for her concrete and loving witness to the dignity of every human being, especially the sick, the poor, the dying and the unborn,” Archbishop of Malta Charles Scicluna told the Times of Malta.

Her special focus was the care of mothers and their children, including mothers who felt pressured to sacrifice their unborn children by want, neglect, despair and government policies that gave no value to human life. In a famous letter that she wrote to the US Supreme Court in 1994, she described the 1973 ‘Roe v Wade’ decision – which disallowed many state and federal restrictions on abortion in the US – as one that “deformed a great nation”.

She added: “The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships… It has portrayed the greatest of gifts – a child – as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.”

Pope John Paul II holding hands with Mother Teresa after visiting the Casa del Cuore Puro, home for the destitute and dying, in Calcutta in February 1986.

St Teresa decried the West’s materialistic push towards convenience and believed that loneliness was the greatest form of poverty.

The Roman Catholic Church has more than 10,000 saints, many of whom had to wait centuries before their elevation. But Mother Teresa was put on the fast track to sainthood after dying of a heart attack on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87.

 The late Pope John Paul II – now saint – allowed the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be launched two years after her death instead of the usual five  and she was beatified in 2003.  The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in heaven and able to intercede with God to perform miracles. She has been credited with two miracles, both involving the healing of sick people. 

Two decades after her death, St Teresa is still a guiding light. Over 3,000 nuns and 500 monks in 170 institutions in 133 countries of the world are members of her order. And millions more are still inspired by this diminutive woman who left behind her a superlative treasure.

Mgr Scicluna said: “May she intercede for us so that we may be faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus.”

The cathedral will be the mother church for the territory of Kosovo.

Cathedral dedicated to Mother Teresa in Kosovo due to be consecrated today

A cathedral dedicated to St Teresa of Calcutta is due to be consecrated today.

Pope Francis has appointed Albanian-born Cardinal Ernest Simoni to be his delegate at the consecration in Pristina, the capital of the partially-recognised State of Kosovo.

Although the building has been a place of worship for Catholics since 2010, the shrine will be formally dedicated to Mother Teresa at the consecration.

The Italianate-style building has been under construction since 2007 and remains unfinished. When complete, it will have two bell towers, each standing at 70 metres high, making it one of the tallest buildings in the city.

Among the designs on its stained-glass windows are depictions of St Teresa with Pope St John Paul II, and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI embracing Pope Francis.

Upon completion, it will become the new see of the Apostolic Administrator of Prizren, the Catholic Church’s most senior cleric in the territory.

There are around 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo, out of a population of approximately two million. Most Kosovars are ethnic Albanians, like Mother Teresa. Almost 95 per cent are Muslim.

The Holy See does not currently recognise Kosovo as a sovereign State.