St Teresa of Calcutta

St Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997) was an Albanian-Indian nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity and devoted her life to serving "the poorest of the poor" in the slums of Calcutta. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje on August 26, 1910, she joined the Sisters of Loreto at eighteen and arrived in India in 1929, teaching for seventeen years at Loreto Convent in Calcutta. On September 10, 1946, while traveling by train to Darjeeling, she experienced what she called her "call within the call"—a divine command to leave the convent and serve Christ among the destitute. She left Loreto on August 16, 1948, donning a simple white cotton sari edged with three blue stripes that would become the habit of her new congregation. After brief medical training in Patna, she returned to Calcutta and opened her first slum school in Motijhil on December 21, 1948, using muddy ground as a blackboard. On October 7, 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity with twelve initial members, taking a fourth vow of "wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor." In 1952, the Calcutta government gave her an abandoned temple of the Hindu goddess Kali to establish Nirmal Hriday—the Home for the Dying—where the terminally ill could die with dignity. In February 1953, she moved her sisters into the three-story building at 54A A.J.C. Bose Road that became the Mother House, where she lived and worked for forty-four years. The Missionaries of Charity expanded rapidly: Pope Paul VI granted a Decree of Praise in 1965, allowing foundations outside India. The first international house opened in Venezuela that year, followed by Rome and Tanzania. By 1996, the congregation operated 517 missions in over 100 countries. Today the order numbers over 5,750 sisters active in 133 countries. Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980. She died at the Mother House on September 5, 1997. Her cause for canonization opened only two years later—an unusually short interval. Pope John Paul II beatified her on October 19, 2003. Pope Francis canonized her on September 4, 2016, during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. In February 2025, her feast was inscribed in the General Roman Calendar as an optional memorial for the universal Church. Her tomb lies on the ground floor of the Mother House—a simple white marble slab inscribed with Christ's words from the cross: "I thirst." These words, which Mother Teresa heard as Christ's cry for souls, became the spiritual foundation of her order. Her private letters, published posthumously as *Come Be My Light*, revealed decades of interior darkness and spiritual aridity, making her a saint not of easy consolation but of faith persevered through night. She serves as co-patron of the Archdiocese of Calcutta alongside Saint Francis Xavier. **Feast Day:** September 5 **Patronage:** World Youth Day volunteers, Missionaries of Charity, Archdiocese of Calcutta (co-patron)