Atheist group protests Mother Teresa stamp

An atheist group has criticized the US Postal Service (USPS) for honoring Mother Teresa with a stamp which it says goes against the postal regulations.

According to the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), the commemorative stamp violates postal regulations against honoring "individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings."

A press release from the U.S. Postal Service issued last month praised Mother Teresa for her 50 years of service to "the sick and destitute of India and the world," as well as her "humility and compassion" and "respect for the innate worth and dignity of humankind."

With this stamp, the U.S. Postal Service recognizes Mother Teresa, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work, USPS said in the statement.

The stamp is expected to be issued on August 26 2010, Mother Teresa's 100th birth anniversary.

The FFRF, however, complains that the announcement violates the ninth regulation which states "stamps or stationery items shall not be issued to honor religious institutions or individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings or beliefs."

Its spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor says, "Mother Teresa is principally known as a religious figure who ran a religious institution. You can't really separate her being a nun and being a Roman Catholic from everything she did."

However, the atheist group has no objections to existing images of Martin Luther King, a Protestant minister, and Malcolm X, strongly associated with the promotion of Islam.

The two men, FFRF says, were better known for their civil rights work than their religious beliefs.