Saint Teresa of Calcutta

On 10 September 1946, a Loreto sister named Mary Teresa was riding a train to Darjeeling for a retreat when she felt what she called a second call. Through the night the cry of Jesus on the cross, "I thirst," kept returning to her. She was thirty-six, and for almost twenty years she had taught history and geography to girls at the Loreto school in Entally, in the east of Calcutta. Over the convent wall lay Motijhil, one of the worst slums in the city, which she knew only by the smell that drifted across.

She had been born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, in a devout Catholic Albanian family. She was baptized the day after her birth and later considered 27 August her true birthday. At eighteen she left for Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto, and a year later she arrived in India. In 1931 she made her first vows and took the name Sister Mary Teresa of the Child Jesus, in honor of Thérèse of Lisieux.

On 16 August 1948 she left the school to share the life of the poorest of the poor. In 1950 she established the Missionaries of Charity, which began by serving the poorest in the slums of Calcutta. Over the decades the congregation grew to work in more than 133 countries, with over 4,500 sisters by 2012. They ran homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis, along with soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, orphanages, and schools. Besides the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the members take a fourth vow of wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.

Her work won the Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize in 1962 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. It also drew criticism, particularly for the poor conditions and the lack of medical care or pain relief in her houses for the dying.

She died on 5 September 1997. After a state funeral she was laid to rest in the chapel of the Mother House on Lower Circular Road in Calcutta, in a plain tomb of white concrete with her Bible on it, beside a stone engraved with a verse from the Gospel of John: love one another as I have loved you. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003, and Pope Francis canonized her on 4 September 2016. In 2017 she was named a co-patron of the Archdiocese of Calcutta, alongside Saint Francis Xavier.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us.