After being informed of her death, Bishop David B. Thompson reflected upon his personal experiences with the revered Catholic figure and the impact of her good work.

"I admired her most greatly for her concern for all human life and the quality of human life. No one was too insignificant. No one was too great a sinner for Mother Teresa not to love that person," Bishop Thompson said.

Bishop Thompson met personally with Mother Teresa on three occasions; two times in San Gregorio at her convent in Rome. "I have a photograph from one of our meetings in San Gregorio. She comes up only to my shoulder, but she is a giant overshadowing me. I think of Shakespeare's famous line: 'The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones.' Mother Teresa never did anything evil, but the good she did will not be interred with her bones. It will live on and on and not be forgotten."

The bishop said that on one of their visits, Mother Teresa asked if he would give her sisters a monstrance (the vessel used for the exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament) to take with them as she sent 12 of her sisters to Russia.

"What do you do when a saint asks you for something? I feel wonderful to have given them this vessel for the Blessed Sacrament for the convent in Russia."

Bishop Thompson said he asked Mother Teresa about her visit with Fidel Castro and how Castro had treated her. "She replied, 'Of course he had to be nice to me!'" The bishop said Mother Teresa told him she had given Castro a rosary adding "You say it, now," to which the Cuban leader responded: "All right, all right."

Recently, Bishop Thompson spoke with Cardinal Bernard Law (archbishop of Boston) who had had a five-and-a-half hour visit with Castro. "Cardinal Law assured me that Mother Teresa certainly paved the way for Castro's visit with the Holy Father and the Holy Father's visit to Cuba," the bishop said.

Mother Teresa is often described as a living saint. Her great works of charity earned her the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She served as the head of the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in 1950, until she stepped down earlier this year due to health problems.

During a month-long visit of the United States in 1982, she visited South Carolina June 21, speaking before a crowd of 9,000 at Johnson-Hagood Stadium in Charleston.

"At her reception into heaven, the Lord must have been there to greet her surrounded by all the babies for whom she had cared," Bishop Thompson said.