`Inspiration Day' Marked -- Mother Teresa Heard Calling To Help Poor On Sept. 10, 1946

CALCUTTA, India - Mourners gathered around Mother Teresa's body today to mark the 51st anniversary of the day she heard a call from God to devote her life to the poor.

The private Mass was held in St. Thomas' Church in Calcutta, where the Roman Catholic nun has lain in state since Sunday. Her funeral will be held Saturday.

Today's service was conducted for "our Missionaries of Charity family" before the chapel was opened to the crowds that have been lining up each day to view her body, said Sukumar Halder, who grew up in Mother Teresa's first orphanage.

Mother Teresa said her epiphany came as she was riding a train from Calcutta to the hill town of Darjeeling on Sept. 10, 1946.

"The message was quite clear - it was an order," she told biographers. "He wanted me to be poor and to love him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor."

Mother Teresa, then a nun teaching in church schools in Calcutta, opened her first school for poor children after returning from a religious retreat in Darjeeling. She went on to found hundreds of orphanages, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and clinics run by her Missionaries of Charity order worldwide.

The "inspiration day" Mass was followed by a public interfaith service.

Since Mother Teresa died last Friday at 87, the Vatican has been flooded with requests that it waive the traditional five-year waiting period before the process for canonization can begin.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's authority on doctrine, said it was unlikely unusual measures would be taken to speed things up.

-------------- Local services --------------

Here are Seattle and Puget Sound-area churches that have announced memorial services honoring Mother Teresa:

-- St. Cecilia Parish, 1310 Madison Ave. N., Bainbridge Island; 7:30 p.m. today.

-- Holy Family Church, 7355 120th Ave. N.E., Kirkland; 7 p.m. today.

-- Holy Family Catholic Church, 9622 20th Ave. S.W., Seattle; English service at 6 p.m. today, Spanish service at 7 p.m. today.

-- Sacred Heart Church, 1614 Farrelly St., Enumclaw; 7:30 p.m.

tomorrow in the daily Mass chapel.

-- St. John Vianney Church, 12600 84th Ave. N.E., Kirkland; 7 p.m. tomorrow.

-- St. James Cathedral, 804 Ninth Ave., Seattle; 7:30 p.m. tomorrow.

-- St. John the Baptist Church, 25810 156th Ave. S.E., Kent; 6:30 p.m. tomorrow.

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