WelCom September 2020
On September 5, the Church celebrates the feast day of St Teresa of Kolkata, who devoted her life to caring for the homeless people on the streets of Kolkata.
St Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor. Considered one of the 20th Century’s greatest humanitarians, she was canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.
Born in Macedonia to parents of Albanian-descent and having taught in India for 17 years, Mother Teresa experienced her ‘call within a call’ that would transform her life. She was riding in a train from Kolkata to the Himalayan foothills for a retreat when she said Christ spoke to her and told her to abandon teaching to work in the slums of Kolkata aiding the city’s poorest and sickest people.
Her order established a hospice, centres for the blind, aged and disabled, and a leper colony. In 1979, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. She died in September 1997.