Mother Teresa Visits Toledo, July 23-24, 1976

Excerpt from the Mansfield News Journal, Sunday, July 25, 1976

Servant to the poorest of the poor by her own definition but considered by many of her contemporaries as a sort of living saint, the small, wizened nun made an unassuming appearance riding down the Toledo Express Airport escalator Friday in a 50-cent white cotton sari and sandals.
The throng awaiting her arrival puzzled many uninformed bystanders. Among the crowd were a large number of children and teen-aged youths and a heavy sprinkling of nuns and priests as well as area protestant representatives and city officials. A sizable contingent of Mennonites, members of the Toledo Indian community and a rabbi completed the mix.
…Wherever she appeared throughout the day she was surrounded by persons wanting to touch her, to talk to her - children wanting to be held
She appeared at a special public evening meeting at Toledo's 2,500-seat Masonic Auditorium and the city's fire marshal had to order several hundred persons to remain in the lobby because of the danger of standing in the aisles.
Many waited through the hour-and-half program for her to come and talk with them briefly.

"When we appear before Him, we will be judged on what we have been and if we have seen Him in the poor and hungry" she added. "But I think the hunger from being rejected, lonely, having no one to love or be loved is to have forgotten what human love is — that is the hungry Christ, the lonely Christ."
"A mistake we often make," Mother Teresa said, "is to look for the poor of the world while overlooking hunger in our neighbor or in our own home — Christ in disguise."

She was in Toledo under the auspices of the department of religious education of the Catholic Diocese of Toledo, while en route to the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia the first week in August.