Mother Teresa was officially canonized as a saint this week in a ceremony at the Vatican. On Sunday, Pope Francis praised her decades of work serving the poor in India and named her Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
She was just “Mother Teresa” the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in June 1982 when she came to Ohio. Teresa spoke at Walsh University in North Canton in June 1982 and held a press conference with a couple dozen reporters.
She was asked about the stories, even then, that she was a living saint. The small Albanian nun laughed and told the journalists to write something beautiful to lift the minds of their readers.
“Sanctity is not the luxury of the few. It is a simple duty for each one of you. You have to be holy in the work that God entrusted to you. So that you ask people who are writing take the trouble. As Jesus said, ‘I am the truth.’ Be the truth that you tell. Be the joy that you share.”
She added, "What you do I cannot do but what I do you cannot do. But together we are doing something beautiful for God. "
Six weeks after leaving North Canton, the 72 year old Mother Teresa brokered a cease fire in the Lebanon War so she could rescue children from a mental hospital in Beirut.
She died in 1997.