Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who worked for over 40 years amongst the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India, is to be honoured on a new postage stamp in the USA.

Other “celebrities” getting stamps will be cinema personalities Katharine Hepburn, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, and singer Kate Smith.

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Mother Teresa, original name, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was born in Skopje, Macedonia, on 26 August 1910 and died in Calcutta on 5 September 1997.

On 19 October 2003, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II, making her now officially “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta” and destined for sainthood.

The US postal service, announcing the Mother Teresa stamp, referred to her humanitarian work, making no reference to her defence of the Catholic position regarding unborn human life.

On 25 February 1994, Mother Teresa was quoted in the Wall Street Journal: “America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court case legalising abortion in the USA on 22 January 1973) has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord. . . . It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.”

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On 3 September 2007, Mother Teresa appeared on Time magazine’s cover, with the caption, “The Secret Life of Mother Teresa”.

Time was featuring a new book – a miserable, el cheapo, tedious, predictable, pot-boiler of a book — “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light”, by Brian Kolodiejchuk.

It was a book about, not Mother Teresa’s love for the poor, but how she was wracked by doubts. For example, her words, “I’m told that God loves me. Yet the reality of darkness, coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul”.

This is hardly news. All believers must fight doubt — persevering despite difficulties of belief which are certainly no evidence for betrayal of the Faith.

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But did Mother Teresa abandon the Faith in other ways?

Yes she did — if certain of her other sayings can be taken at face value.

In particular, “I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic . . . .”  (quoted by Anthony Stern in “Everything Starts from Prayer: Mother Teresa’s meditations on spiritual life for people of all faiths”).

We know that Jesus himself said the opposite, “Go, teach all nations, baptising them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,”  i.e. don’t make them better Hindus, Muslims etc. — make them Christians.

Should the move to declare Mother Teresa a Catholic “saint” be scrapped, after all?

We could still admire her for her kindness.