Mother Teresa: her life, mission, and lasting legacy

Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910, who spent most of her life in Calcutta, India, caring for the poorest and sickest people she could find. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and was declared a saint by the Catholic Church in 2016 under the name Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Her life is one of the most documented examples of a person who built an entire ministry around direct, hands-on service to people that society had largely abandoned.

Who was Mother Teresa and where did she come from

She was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, a city that was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is today the capital of North Macedonia. Her family was Albanian Catholic, and she grew up in a household that valued charity; her mother regularly brought food to neighbors in need and took the children along on these visits.

At eighteen, she left home to join the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish order with missions in India. She trained in Dublin briefly before sailing to India in 1929. She took her first religious vows in 1931 and chose the name Teresa, after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Carmelite known for her simple, quiet devotion.

For nearly two decades she taught geography and catechism at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, eventually becoming the school's principal. From the outside, her life looked settled: a respected teacher inside the walls of a convent school, removed from the extreme poverty that surrounded the city.

What changed her path: the call she described in 1946

In September 1946, while traveling to a retreat in Darjeeling, she described experiencing what she later called a "call within a call." She understood it as an instruction to leave convent life and live among the poor, serving them directly rather than from behind the walls of a school.

It took two years of correspondence with Church authorities before she received permission to leave the Loreto order while remaining a nun under special dispensation. In 1948, she exchanged her Loreto habit for a simple white cotton sari with blue trim, the garment that would become her lifelong image, and moved into the slums of Calcutta alone.

How the Missionaries of Charity grew from one woman to a global order

Within a year, former students and other women began joining her work. In 1950, the Vatican formally recognized the group as a new religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, whose stated mission was to care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society."

The order's early milestones give a sense of how quickly it expanded:

• 1952: Opening of Nirmal Hriday, a home for the dying and destitute in a former pilgrim hostel in Calcutta.
• 1955: Founding of Shishu Bhavan, a children's home for orphaned and abandoned infants.
• 1957: Beginning of outreach to people affected by leprosy, at a time when the disease carried heavy social stigma.
• 1960s: Expansion beyond India, with new houses opening in Venezuela, Rome, and other locations outside Asia.
• 1965: Vatican approval allowing the congregation to establish houses in other countries, accelerating its international growth.

By the time of her death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity operated in more than 100 countries, running hospices, soup kitchens, schools, orphanages, and homes for people with disabilities. The order also grew to include a branch for men, the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, and lay volunteers known as Co-Workers.

What her daily work actually involved

Accounts from visitors, volunteers, and journalists describe a routine built around physical, unglamorous labor rather than public speaking or fundraising events. A typical description of her approach includes:

1. Early morning prayer and Mass, which she considered the foundation that made the rest of the day possible.
2. Direct physical care for dying patients, including cleaning wounds, feeding people too weak to feed themselves, and sitting with them so they would not die alone.
3. Finding people on the streets who were sick or dying and bringing them to a home where they could be cared for, even if only for their final hours.
4. Training volunteers who arrived from around the world, many with no medical background, to do basic nursing tasks.
5. Administrative work in later decades, since running a global order required correspondence, travel, and oversight of dozens of houses.

She often said that the point was not to solve poverty on a grand scale but to make sure no individual person felt invisible. One of her most repeated lines captures this idea directly:

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

Why she received the Nobel Peace Prize

In 1979, the Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the poor and suffering, framing her as someone who addressed the roots of conflict and injustice through direct humanitarian service. She asked that the traditional Nobel banquet be canceled and that the money saved, along with her prize funds, go directly to the poor in Calcutta.

In her acceptance speech, she connected her work to a broader argument that peace begins with how individuals treat each other at the smallest, most personal level, rather than only through treaties and policy. That idea remained consistent throughout her public statements for the rest of her life.

How the canonization process unfolded after her death

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. Her funeral in Calcutta drew leaders and mourners from around the world, and the Indian government granted her a state funeral, an honor rarely extended to someone who was not a head of state.

The path to sainthood followed these major steps:

• 1999: Pope John Paul II waived the usual five-year waiting period before a sainthood investigation can begin, allowing the process to start almost immediately.
• 2003: She was beatified, the step just before canonization, after the Church recognized a miracle attributed to her intercession.
• 2016: Pope Francis canonized her as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, after a second recognized miracle.
• September 5: Her feast day on the Catholic liturgical calendar, marking the anniversary of her death.

Canonization in the Catholic Church is a formal declaration that a person lived a life of heroic virtue and is believed to be in heaven, making her someone the faithful can pray to for intercession.

What critics have said about her work

Not every assessment of Mother Teresa's legacy has been uniformly positive. Some journalists, doctors, and former volunteers raised concerns over the years about aspects of how the Missionaries of Charity operated, including:

• Questions about the quality of medical care in some of her homes, with critics arguing that pain management and medical standards lagged behind what was available elsewhere.
• Concerns about financial transparency, since the order received large donations but published limited public accounting of how funds were spent.
• Debate over whether her emphasis on accepting suffering as spiritually meaningful discouraged more aggressive medical intervention for patients who might have been treatable.

Defenders of her work point out that she operated in some of the poorest, most under-resourced parts of the world, often with minimal government support, and that her homes served people who had nowhere else to go at all. Both perspectives appear regularly in biographies and documentaries about her life, and a balanced understanding of her legacy generally includes both the scale of her charitable reach and these documented criticisms.

What the Missionaries of Charity do today

The order continues its work in cities across the world, running homes for the dying, centers for people with leprosy and tuberculosis, orphanages, and soup kitchens. Members still take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and a fourth vow specific to the order: wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.

Volunteers can still work alongside the sisters in several cities, including the original houses in Kolkata (as Calcutta is now officially named). Most volunteer placements involve basic tasks such as feeding patients, washing laundry, or playing with children at the orphanages, rather than medical procedures.

How her approach to charity differs from other models

Compared to large international aid organizations that focus on infrastructure, policy change, or long-term development projects, Mother Teresa's model centered almost entirely on immediate, personal presence. She was less concerned with changing economic systems and more focused on making sure that any single dying or abandoned person in front of her was treated with dignity.

This distinction explains both the admiration and the criticism her work attracted. Supporters see it as a necessary complement to larger development efforts, filling gaps that bureaucratic systems often miss. Critics argue that direct charity alone, without structural change, cannot address the underlying causes of poverty. Both views can be true at once, since her goal was never to end poverty as a system but to meet the person right in front of her.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mother Teresa's real name?

She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910. She took the religious name Teresa, after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, when she joined the Sisters of Loreto, and was later canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Why is Mother Teresa called a saint?

The Catholic Church canonized her in 2016 after recognizing two miracles attributed to her intercession following her death in 1997. Canonization is the Church's formal declaration that a person lived with exceptional virtue and is believed to be in heaven.

Where did Mother Teresa do most of her work?

Most of her work took place in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, where she lived from 1929 until her death in 1997. The Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded there in 1950, later expanded to more than 100 countries.

Did Mother Teresa face any criticism?

Yes. Some critics questioned the medical standards in her homes and the limited financial transparency of the Missionaries of Charity. Supporters counter that she served extremely poor communities with little outside support, often as the only available option for the dying.