Deepertruth: Stand in the Gap with us and Saint Teresa of Calcutta

 Stand in the Gap with us and Saint Teresa of Calcutta 9/5/2023

In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta with an initial group of 12 followers. By 1969 it became an international association known to help “the poorest of the poor,” often by undertaking relief work after natural disasters. Ten years later she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Her new name was Teresa. In India she received a second call from God: to help the poor while living among them. She founded a new sisterhood, Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa and her helpers built homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for the terminally ill in Calcutta.

Mother Teresa created many homes for the dying and the unwanted from Calcutta to New York to Albania. She was one of the first to establish homes for AIDS victims. For more than 50 years, this courageous individual comforted the poor, the dying, and the unwanted around the world.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the tiny woman recognized throughout the world for her work among the poorest of the poor, was beatified October 19, 2003. Among those present were hundreds of Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in 1950, as a diocesan religious community. Today the congregation also includes contemplative sisters and brothers, and an order of priests.

Born to Albanian parents in what is now Skopje, Macedonia, Gonxha (Agnes) Bojaxhiu was the youngest of the three children who survived. For a time, the family lived comfortably, and her father’s construction business thrived. But life changed overnight following his unexpected death.