St. Teresa of Calcutta

Who they were

Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was an Albanian girl from Skopje who went to India as a Loreto sister and taught comfortable students for years, until, on a train to Darjeeling in 1946, she received what she called the call within a call: leave the convent, live among the poorest, and serve Christ in them.

The Missionaries of Charity, founded in 1950 with twelve members, numbered thousands of sisters on every continent by her death, running homes for the dying, the abandoned, and the unwanted. Unwanted was her word and her category. The greatest poverty, she insisted, was being unwanted. The Nobel committee gave her the Peace Prize in 1979, and she asked them to cancel the banquet and give the money to the poor. What no one knew until her letters were published after her death is that from almost the moment the work began, her interior sense of God's presence went dark and stayed dark for roughly fifty years, and she served, smiled, and prayed through all of it. She was canonized in 2016.

Why people turn to St. Teresa of Calcutta

The poor and those who serve them, and, since the letters, everyone whose faith is currently running on obedience instead of feeling. She is the Church's great modern witness that fidelity does not require felt consolation.

How to ask their intercession

Her own advice was small things with great love: one decade, offered for one unwanted person you can actually name. If you are in the darkness, pray alongside her rather than for rescue first. The persisting is the prayer.