Transcript for Sept. 5, 1997: Mother Teresa dies at 87

This evening we heard that mother Theresa had died. And from here across the world for the second time in a week much of the world was suddenly faced with a loss of someone they had admired. Or revered. Mother Teresa the symbol of selfless giving to so much of the world died in India today at the age of 87. First here's ABC's Aaron Brown. Mother Teresa died in the mission that she founded in Calcutta. He had just completed mass and had returned to were rule. A member of her order in Rome confirm the cause of her death. And we know that sheet trying to be court sort of I. Highest paid. Calcutta was her home and each worker inspiration. Tonight there are tears in the slums of that city from the people she called the poorest of the poor. It's not an accomplice and has been called in to handle the crowds there's a lot of Russian crush clearing out of development. So big it's it's part of food and all of 2000 to another mother I was at the moment. But Calcutta was just the beginning whether two recent quarter operating around the could be more than two dozen clinics in the United States. It was an adoption agency in Washington a mission in the Bronx and New York's Saint Patrick's Cathedral tonight there was shocked. Just last year Mother Teresa became only the fifth person ever to receive honorary US citizenship. She served the poor. The suffering in the dying. And in so doing she served. As an inspiration and a challenge. All the rest of us if ever there was a pure hard. It was hers. While she met with an often influenced most every important leader of our time her greatest influence was on the nuns who followed her. Eighteen of them worked at saint Malick eyes church in Chicago. A church in mother Teresa's kind of neighborhood what Mother Teresa. It was about is that she inspired. A tremendous group of people to act out these. Behaviors of compassionate. There was this from a mission in Los Angeles. There's still an ever believed plays. Who can cover throughout the way she did. Are. Sunday in her last public statement Mother Teresa said this about Princess Diana on. He added that the blue ocean surface remove that hook up. Does. Just yesterday it was announced a Mother Teresa would not attend Diana's funeral that her health was too fragile. But there was no suggestion that she was gravely ill or near death. Peter. Aaron thank you very much to be so many anecdotes and stories about mother Theresa last year she told. Prince Michael of Greece that she had had a dream I was at the gates of heaven she said in some Peter told me go back to earth. There are no slums up here.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.