St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

St. Teresa of Calcutta, known throughout the world as Mother Teresa, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman world. Raised in a devout Albanian Catholic family, she entered the Sisters of Loreto and went to India, where she taught girls in Calcutta. For years she lived as a religious teacher, faithful to prayer and community life.

In 1946, while traveling by train to Darjeeling, she experienced what she later called a “call within a call.” She believed Christ was asking her to leave the convent school and serve Him among the poorest of the poor. After permissions were granted, she began living among the destitute in Calcutta, wearing the simple white sari with blue border that became associated with the Missionaries of Charity.

Her work grew from direct contact with suffering: the dying, abandoned children, leprosy patients, the hungry, and those who had no one to love them. In 1950 the Missionaries of Charity were formally established. Their houses spread throughout India and then across the world, serving the poorest with a spirituality centered on Jesus’ thirst on the Cross.

Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, but her private writings later revealed long interior darkness. She served with heroic perseverance even when she felt little consolation. This hidden suffering made her charity more, not less, profound.

She died in Calcutta on 5 September 1997. The healings of Monica Besra in India and Marcilio Haddad Andrino in Brazil were associated with her beatification and canonization causes. Pope Francis canonized her in 2016. Her life remains one of the most recognizable modern examples of Catholic charity: love expressed not as sentiment, but as washing, feeding, carrying, and accompanying Christ in His poorest members.

Her canonization did not remove controversy from discussion of her work, but the Church judged the heroic virtue of a woman who chose to remain with the abandoned when the work was exhausting and misunderstood. Her name remains tied to a simple conviction: the unwanted person is Christ in distressing disguise.