Church choir to get Mother Teresa Award

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir will be honored Sunday as a laureate of the Mother Teresa Award for edifying the world through choral performances and recordings.

"This is the only choir that I know that has touched the entire world with its beauty," said Dan Paulos, director of the St. Bernadette Institute of Sacred Art, which gives the award. "There are a lot of choirs out there, but none so remarkable. It's a gift of God and it should be shared with the world."

The Very Reverend Joseph Mayo, rector of the Cathedral of the Madeline, will present the award to the choir at 10 a.m. after the weekly Music and the Spoken Word broadcast.

The award is a statuette of a modernized Mother Teresa. Other laureates of the Mother Teresa Award include Pope John Paul II, Maya Angelou, Andrea Bocelli, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and Elie Wiesel.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir began in the mid-19th century as the first pioneers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Salt Lake Valley. The choir is known worldwide for its recordings, tours and weekly broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word, the longest-running network radio broadcast in the world.