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Members of the Thomas Aquinas College community have responded with joy to today’s news that His Holiness Pope Francis will canonize Bl. Mother Teresa on September 4.

The College has long maintained a special devotion to the saint of Calcutta, who served as its Commencement Speaker in 1982. “When she visited us nearly 35 years ago, there was little doubt that we were in the presence of a future saint,” reflects President Michael F. McLean. “What a blessing it is that we will soon get to witness her canonization, and that the College will be able to call upon Saint Teresa of Calcutta as a special intercessor and patron.”

While touring the United States in 1982, Bl. Mother Teresa visited just three campuses: Harvard University, Georgetown University, and — at the request of her friend Rev. John Hardon, S.J. — Thomas Aquinas College. She served as that year’s Commencement Speaker and, like Fr. Hardon before her, received the College’s highest honor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion. (See text and video of her address and a press conference she gave while on campus.) A bust of Bl. Mother Teresa, commemorating that day, is prominently displayed in St. Bernardine of Siena Library.

Throughout the years, the College’s connection to Bl. Mother Teresa has continued. In 1991, when Dr. Thomas E. Dillon was appointed as the second president of Thomas Aquinas College, Mother Teresa responded to an invitation to his inauguration with a letter from India — now a relic of one of the blessed in heaven. Unable to attend the festivities, she wrote to extend her congratulations and some loving advice: “Be God’s hands to serve those entrusted to you and His heart to love them.”

On August 26, 2010, as the world celebrated Bl. Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday, the College scheduled a special mid-day Mass in her honor in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel. During the Mass, enlarged photographs from Bl. Teresa’s 1982 visit stood within the sanctuary as well as in the loggia just outside the Chapel, where holy cards and transcripts of her 1982 Commencement Address were made available.

“For many of our students, especially those who have gone on to enter the religious life, Mother Teresa has been a true model and inspiration,” says Dr. McLean. “It is fitting that she, who always saw the face of Christ in ‘the distressing disguise of the poor,’ would be canonized during this, the Jubilee Year of Mercy. We look forward to celebrating her canonization on September 4, and to observing her feast day here for many years to come.”