Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity
An Albanian-born nun who arrived in India in 1929, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 to serve 'the poorest of the poor' — work that earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (1910–1997) was born in Skopje to an ethnic Albanian Catholic family. She joined the Sisters of Loreto in 1928, took the name Teresa, and arrived in Calcutta in 1929, where she spent the next two decades teaching at the Loreto convent school.
On a train journey to Darjeeling in September 1946 she experienced what she later called "the call within the call" — to leave the convent and live among the destitute. She received Vatican permission in 1948, took Indian citizenship, and on October 7, 1950 founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Their first home for the dying, Nirmal Hriday ("Pure Heart"), opened in 1952 in a donated wing of the Kalighat temple complex.
By her death on September 5, 1997, the Missionaries of Charity ran 610 missions in 123 countries. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 (which she accepted on behalf of "the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for"), was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003, and canonised by Pope Francis in 2016.