(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign has removed a picture of the New York Democrat with Mother Teresa from a campaign video, at the request of the charitable order that the late Catholic nun founded in India.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer confirmed that Mother Teresa's order had asked the campaign to remove the image, "So we did."

"Sen. Clinton was proud to have worked with and known Mother Teresa," he said.

In the original version of a five-minute advertisement, Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, said, "Hillary in effect, was the face of America - in Africa, in India" over a picture of Sen. Clinton waving alongside Mother Teresa.

The image was immediately followed by a clip of the senator speaking before the 1995 International Conference on Women in Beijing, where she declared: "It is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights."

The original clip is no longer available on the candidate's website. An amended version now posted there shows the image of an elephant over the words "in Africa, in India."

Fidelis, a Catholic advocacy group, in a statement welcomed the removal of the image.

"Fidelis is very happy that the public campaign we waged against Hillary Clinton's wholly inappropriate use of Blessed Mother Teresa's image in a campaign video has succeeded," said the group's president, Joseph Cella.

He noted that Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, had "abhorred the international abortion policies of the U.N." and had in fact sent a letter to that Beijing conference in which she decried "the evil of abortion."

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Fidelis urged Clinton's presidential campaign in May to stop using the image.

The group at the same time faxed a letter to Sister Nirmala, the superior general of the India-based Missionaries of Charity, recommending that she look into the matter.

"In our letter, we pointed out that the use of Blessed Teresa's image was particularly inappropriate and disturbing given Senator Clinton's staunch support of abortion both here in the United States and abroad," Cella said, noting that "Mother Teresa tirelessly fought to protect unborn children."

Marjorie Signer, director of communications and policy for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, told Cybercast News Service on Monday that she considered Fidelis' complaint "very simplistic."

"It's totally inappropriate to reduce everything to a person's stand on abortion," Signer said. "To use that as a litmus test does not serve anybody very well at all. It does not further good government or even good religion."

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said that whenever politics and religion mix, "it's very tricky territory."

While acknowledging that his organization "didn't raise any fuss" over the Clinton video, Donohue told Cybercast News Service that he would not criticize Fidelis for what he called "a misappropriation" of Mother Teresa's reputation.

"Mother Teresa is on record as saying that abortion is one of the greatest expressions of violence imaginable," he stated. "There was no true great relationship between Hillary Clinton and Mother Teresa, so for Clinton to appropriate an image that gives us the impression that there was, is something I think Fidelis had just cause to feel offended by.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, it's not the worst thing in the world," Donohue continued. "If it's genuine and sincere, that's one thing, but otherwise, it's very tacky. Clinton just doesn't want to create unnecessary rancor with Catholics."

Donohue said the Catholic League only gets "drawn in" to matters regarding politics when a candidate "wears his religion on his sleeve, but his record reveals a great antipathy toward the church on public policy matters."

One example he cited was Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who ran for president in 2004. "He went around saying, 'I'm a devout Catholic, and my wife's a devout Catholic.' They were so devout that on every single public policy the Catholic Church had taken a stand on, they were against it."

During the Clinton presidency, Mother Teresa addressed the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., where she called abortion "the greatest destroyer of peace today."

"It is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" she asked the gathering, which was attended by the Clintons and also addressed by the then president.

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