MOTHER TERESA DEAD AT 87.

Byline: Bikas Das Associated Press 

Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun revered for her tireless dedication to the world's most wretched, died Friday surrounded by grieving sisters of her order. She was 87.

Crowds of weeping people stood in the rain before dawn in the streets outside her Missionaries of Charity home in central Calcutta. Pope John Paul II, President Clinton and other world leaders praised Mother Teresa and her commitment to the poor.

With Mother Teresa gone, ``there is less love in the world, less compassion, less light,'' said President Jacques Chirac of France. ``She leaves us a strong message which has no borders and which goes beyond faith: helping, listening, solidarity. The world is in mourning.''

The frail, 4-foot-11-inch nun, who was born in Europe but became an Indian citizen during her six decades on the subcontinent, had suffered heart problems and other ailments for years, and gave up leadership of her order in March because she was too ill to do the job.

Her successor, Sister Nirmala, told reporters that Mother Teresa died of a heart attack.

Mother Teresa's last words were, ``I cannot breathe,'' said a close friend, Sunita Kumar. She said Mother Teresa then slumped down in her bed.

Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity indicated the funeral is tentatively planned for Wednesday, the 51st anniversary of the day Mother Teresa received what she said was a calling from Jesus ``to serve him among the poorest of the poor.''

A spokeswoman reached at the Missionaries of Charity office said no definite funeral arrangements have been made.

Mother Teresa's body was taken to a chapel at the convent and laid, with hands clasped, in the simple habit worn by members of her order - a blue-trimmed white sari and a long-sleeved blouse. Young nuns filed past, touching her feet in a traditional Indian gesture of respect.

The Vatican said Pope John Paul II would celebrate a Mass for her today at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome. ``Her death touched his heart very deeply,'' said the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, a spokesman.

Working in the slums of Calcutta 50 years ago, Mother Teresa started taking in the destitute dying in gutters, sheltering infants abandoned in trash heaps, soothing the ulcers of lepers and helping the insane.

A British TV documentary about her in 1969 brought ``the saint of the gutters'' international attention, and volunteers and donations poured in to the religious order she founded.

That allowed her to spread her work around the globe, with more than 500 missions in 100 countries by mid-1990, from the hovels of Third World nations to the ghettos of New York. Her order opened one of the first homes for AIDS victims.

``The world and especially India, is poorer by her passing away,'' said India's prime minister, Inder Kumar Gujral. ``Hers was a life devoted to bring love, peace and joy to people, whom the world generally shuns.''

Although India is predominantly Hindu, Mother Teresa was widely regarded as a national treasure who transcended religious divisions.

She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

``Mother Teresa stands out, in a very positive way, as an example of true self-sacrifice in humanitarian work. She became a symbol to the world,'' Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee, said Friday.

Vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, President Clinton called the nun ``an incredible person.'' In Washington, where just three months ago Mother Teresa received the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives observed a moment of silence.

In addition to her charity work, Mother Teresa used her fame as a platform to speak out strongly for conservative values, arguing passionately against abortion, contraception and divorce. She traveled as an envoy of the pope to preach devotion to life.

A tiny, frail woman bent almost double in her later years, she was as renowned for her humility as her charity.

Accepting the Nobel in the name of the ``unwanted, unloved and uncared for,'' she wore the same $1 white sari that she had adopted to identify herself with the poor when she founded Missionaries of Charity.

She used the Nobel's $192,000 award to help finance her charitable work, along with dozens of other financial prizes and donations from foundations and private citizens.

Born on Aug. 26, 1910, as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, she lived in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia. At 18, she became a nun in the Loreto teaching order and moved to India to teach in its convent schools.

Taking the name Sister Teresa after St. Teresa of Lisieux, the patroness of missionaries, she spent the next 17 years teaching at St. Mary's high school in Calcutta, eventually serving as principal. She fell ill in 1946 and was sent to the mountain town of Darjeeling to recuperate.

``It was in the train I heard the call to give up all and follow him to the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor,'' she recalled.

In 1948, Pope Pius XII permitted her to leave her order, and she began teaching Calcutta slum children whose families could not afford to send them to school. The children called her ``Mother Teresa.''

One day, she found a woman ``half-eaten up by maggots and rats'' lying in the street in front of a hospital. She sat with the woman until she died.

After appealing to authorities for a building where the poor could die in dignity, Mother Teresa was given a hostel used by pilgrims next to the temple of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction.

She and a small group of nuns roamed Calcutta's slums, scooping up destitute people lying in the gutters.

Local people complained and a police commissioner was sent to the Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart) clinic to investigate. Moved by the misery of the nuns' charges, he announced he would evict the women only when the complainers persuaded their mothers and sisters to take over the work.

The clinic remained the center of Mother Teresa's growing charity and the place she called home.

Wherever people needed comfort, she was there: with the hungry in Ethiopia, the radiation victims at Chernobyl, the survivors of Armenia's earthquake, the blacks of South Africa's squalid townships.

In 1982, at the height of the siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa persuaded the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas to stop shooting long enough for her to rescue 37 children trapped in a hospital on the front line.

When communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, she rushed into the communist countries that had shunned her for decades with dozens of projects.

But there were criticisms.

A 1994 British television documentary, ``Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta,'' argued she was promoting a reactionary strain of religion.

The film, later shown in the United States, also criticized her for accepting contributions without questioning the source, such as from Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

In 1992, she wrote to a U.S. judge on behalf of savings and loan executive Charles Keating, who was on trial for fraud. Keating, who donated $1.25 million to her order, ``has always been kind and generous to God's poor,'' she said.

Mother Teresa brushed aside accusations of impropriety.

``No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work,'' she said.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: The body of Mother Teresa, who died Friday at the age of 87, is flanked by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.

Associated Press