Mother Teresa

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, in what is now North Macedonia, to an Albanian Catholic family. Her father died when she was eight. She grew up devout and drawn to missionary work, and at eighteen left home to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland — a departure she later described as a final farewell, knowing she would not return. She never did.

She took her final vows in 1937 and spent the next decade teaching at St. Mary's High School in Kolkata. Then, on September 10, 1946, while traveling by train to a spiritual retreat, she received what she called a "call within a call" — a directive she understood as Christ asking her to leave the convent and serve the poorest of the poor in the slums of the city. It took two years to receive permission. She left with five rupees and no plan.

She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. The order began with thirteen members in Kolkata; by the time of her death it operated in approximately 123 countries, running hospices, orphanages, and homes for the destitute and dying. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, donating the prize money to the poor.

After her death, letters she had written to her spiritual directors over decades were published, revealing a prolonged interior darkness — a sense of God's absence that had endured for most of her public ministry. The letters were striking for what they showed: a woman who served with apparent joy while privately experiencing desolation, and who chose to continue regardless.

She died on September 5, 1997. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 19, 2003, and canonized by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016, as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.