There are very few people who have ever been able to say they kissed a real saint, but retired Bethlehem teacher Nancy Kembel is someone who can. Forty-four years ago she kissed Mother Teresa of Calcutta on the cheek, then called the world-famous missionary "a living saint in our midst."

How right Kembel was. On Sept. 4, just 19 years after her death, Mother Teresa was officially canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.Kembel met Mother Teresa in 1972 when the future Nobel Peace Prize winner visited Philadelphia on her tour of the United States. She was in this country to open the first mission to be run by the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order she founded in 1950 to care for, as she described it, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."At the time of the visit, Kembel was a 28-year-old nun whose convent was attached to St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in North Philadelphia where Mother Teresa was scheduled to speak. When she arrived, Kembel says, "I ran out and greeted her, kissed her and just kind of stayed with her. I was just brazen."What motivated Kembel to be so forward was her admiration for Mother Teresa."She was my role model," she says. "I worked with the poor in North Philadelphia as a sister of St. Francis. There were many similarities between Mother Teresa's life and St. Francis': poverty, simplicity and teaching Christ to the poor. They lived what they taught, which was very important to me."Born in Albania, but living most of her life in India, Mother Teresa took her vows as a nun in 1937 while she was teaching at the Loreto convent in eastern Calcutta. After becoming increasingly distressed by the poverty, famine and death she witnessed in the city, she began her missionary work with the poor in 1948. Identifying with the people she would serve, she replaced her traditional Loreto nun's habit to wear the now-familiar white cotton sari with blue border that she designed herself.After receiving Indian citizenship, Mother Teresa received basic medical training and then went to work in the slums, tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. Later she was joined by a group of young women who became the basis for a new religious order dedicated to serving the "poorest among the poor."Plagued by heart trouble since her first heart attack in 1983, Mother Teresa died in 1997, leaving behind a legacy of more than 4,000 sisters working as Missionaries of Charity, and an associated brotherhood of 300 members, together operating 610 missions in 123 countries.By 2012 the number had increased to more than 4,500 sisters in 133 countries, running hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; along with soup kitchens, dispensaries and mobile clinics, children's and family counseling programs, orphanages and schools.After an intense process of research and verification by separate committees of doctors, theologians and cardinals, Mother Teresa was canonized as Saint Teresa by Pope Francis on Sept. 4 in Rome. Kembel says she always considered Mother Teresa to be saintly because of the work did."Having her canonized in our lifetime is so, so special."Kembel's greeting of Mother Teresa was photographed, as was the missionary signing a book about her life for Kembel. Standing next to those framed photographs lining a table in her living room in Bethlehem, Kembel shows the book that she says she cherishes.Recalling that day in 1972 when she was one of 2,000 nuns from the diocese of Philadelphia who sat in the church to hear Mother Teresa speak, Kembel says the message was all about love."She said we are supposed to love each other and there is really no reason not to. Many people are hungry for bread. Many others are hungry for love, to be loved by someone, needed by someone."When Kembel left the convent in 1981, she wanted to work a year with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, but her father had died so she stayed here to help her mother. She spent the next 25 years teaching in the Diocese of Philadelphia. When her mother fell ill, she moved back to Bethlehem, where she was born and raised. She spent another 20 years teaching grades two to eight in the Bethlehem public schools."I tried to carry on Mother Teresa's work in the classroom in my hometown."She retired in 2010.Today, she has a therapy dog, Spencer, who helps with a reading program for fourth graders at Spring Garden ES. She also volunteers with the Bethlehem Mounted Patrol and a rescue program for abused horses in Phillipsburg, New Jersey.In all her endeavors, Mother Teresa isn't far from Kembel's thoughts. Every morning of every day she says she reads one of Mother Teresa's sayings from "Thirsting for God: A Yearbook of Prayers, Meditations and Anecdotes."