WelCom February/March 2025
Pope Francis has added the feast day of St Teresa of Kolkata to the General Roman Calendar so that her ‘Optional Memorial shall be celebrated by all on 5 September every year’. Cardinal Arthur Roche and Archbishop Vittorio Francesco Viola, respectively prefect and secretary of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, announced the Pope’s decision in a decree published by the Vatican. Previously the feast day of St Teresa of Calcutta, as the Vatican refers to the city in India where she began her work with the abandoned poor, was inscribed only in the proper calendar of the Missionaries of Charity and the proper calendar of India. Now her memorial is included in the calendar of the universal church.