Mother Teresa - tributes continue to pour in

Mother Teresa explaining her philosophy

India Pays Homage to Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa's body was moved on Sunday from the headquarters of the order she founded to a church in the centre of Calcutta.

Those paying their respects ranged from the highest to the lowest on the social ladder, from Calcutta's well-to-do to some of its many street children. They included people of all faiths.

Mourning Mother Teresa in Calcutta

As they queued, some openly displayed their emotions but most just waited in silence.

The Indian Prime Minister, I.K. Gujral, made his trip of homage on Sunday. Saying he was speaking on behalf of a bereaved nation, he placed Mother Teresa alongside Mahatma Gandhi in the battle against poverty.

If Gandhi was the symbol of this in the first half of this century, Mr Gujral said, then in the second half it was Mother Teresa who'd shown the path to working for the poor and championing the dispossessed. Everyone had been orphaned by her death, he said, and the real memorial to her would be for people to dedicate themselves to the fight against hunger and poverty.

The Indian government has declared a day of state mourning for Mother Teresa. The government said her funeral in Calcutta next Saturday would be given the status of a state occasion -- an honour normally reserved for India's highest political leaders.

Indian Prime Minister compares Mother Teresa to Gandhi

Mother Teresa was born of Albanian parents 87 years ago.

When she was 18 she joined a community of Irish nuns and went to their mission in Calcutta in 1929.

Just over twenty years later she founded the Missionaries of Charity -- which over the succeeding years established hundreds of orphanages, homes for the poor and other charity centres around the world.

Mother Teresa was not without her critics. Some doctors accused her of providing haphazard medical care and not using basic medicines, like painkillers. Writing in the leading medical journal The Lancet in 1994, Dr Robin Fox commented: "Mother Teresa prefers providence to planning".

Princess Diana was among Mother Teresa's admirers

In the same year, a British documentary - controversially entitled "Hell's Angel" - charged that she urged the poor to accept their fate, portraying the rich as favoured by God. Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the script, remarked: "She lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters...and preaches surrender and prostration to the poor."

In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, one of many honours bestowed on her. She said simply that she had a special calling to help the poorest of the poor.