Seventy-five years ago, in the heart of Calcutta, a humble sister answered a divine call that would change the world. On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a community built entirely on love for “the poorest of the poor.”
According to National Review, the Missionaries of Charity today serve in some of the world’s most desperate places, including Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, Syria, and South Sudan. True to their founder’s vision, they “receive no salary or pension” and “neither fundraise nor charge for their care,” preferring instead “the insecurity of Divine Providence.” This radical trust in God remains the heart of their mission.
A Call in the Midst of Chaos
Before the world knew her as Mother Teresa, she was an unassuming teacher with the Sisters of Loreto in Calcutta during the 1940s, a time of famine, war, and religious violence. When nearly all her fellow sisters were evacuated, she stayed behind to care for hundreds of students who had nowhere to go. The National Review recounts that she worked until “she nearly died of exhaustion,” yet her compassion only deepened.
In September 1946, while traveling to Darjeeling for a retreat, she experienced what she later called her “call within a call.” God spoke to her heart, telling her to leave the convent and live among the poor. “The message was quite clear,” she later said. “I was to leave the convent and work with the poor while living among them. It was an order. I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there,” (National Review).
The Birth of a New Mission
It would take Mother Teresa two years of prayer, waiting, and petitioning Church authorities before she received permission to begin her work. On December 21, 1948, wearing a simple white cotton sari with blue stripes, she walked into the slums of Calcutta with no money, no convent, and no followers. As National Review describes, she begged for food and scavenged for medicine, often weeping from loneliness and exhaustion. Yet she found “many joys in the slums” and wrote that “the thirst for souls increases the closer I come with them.”
Her first companions were three of her former students, who joined her despite the harsh life of poverty and prayer. By 1950, there were twelve sisters and an official recognition from the Archbishop of Calcutta. Within 25 years, there were more than 1,000 Missionaries of Charity serving around the world.
A Worldwide Family of Love
Today, there are more than 5,500 Missionaries of Charity serving in over 138 countries, including 40 homes in the United States and Canada (National Review). Many have given their lives in service: eight were martyred in Yemen, others perished in disasters and pandemics, but their joy endures.
These sisters, brothers, and priests continue to embody Mother Teresa’s conviction that “love, to be real, must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self.” They follow her daring call to “prefer the insecurity of Divine Providence” and in doing so, continue to reveal the heart of Christ to a suffering world.
Seventy-five years later, the Missionaries of Charity remind us that holiness begins not with wealth or influence, but with the courage to love one soul at a time.
