At Calcutta in India, Blessed Teresa (Agnes) Gonxha Bojaxhiu, virgin, who, born in Epirus, slaked the thirst of Christ abandoned on the cross with outstanding charity toward the poorest of her brethren, and founded the Congregations of the Missionary Sisters and of the Missionary Brothers of Charity for the full service of the sick and the abandoned.
Lifespan: 1910–1997
Beatified: 19 October 2003 by Pope John Paul II
Canonized: 4 September 2016 by Pope Francis, Rome
Memoria liturgica: 5 September
“Whoever has not yet been born is the weakest, the smallest, the most wretched.”
Life and Works
Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the future Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was born in Skopje on 26 August 1910 and was baptized the following day. She was the youngest of five children, two of whom died in infancy. Her parents, Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu, provided a welcoming home for their three children. Mother Teresa often said: “We were a fine, united family.” She received her First Communion at the age of five and a half, and was confirmed in November 1916. Gonxha’s father was a merchant in Skopje, which at the time of her birth was the capital of the Ottoman Province of Kosovo. The prosperity and security of their family life came to an end with the sudden death of Nikola in 1918. Drana found herself alone in providing for her three children. Despite her new burdens and responsibilities, as a fervent believer she gave her children a solid formation in the Catholic faith. She was a loving but strict mother who exercised a profound influence on her daughter’s personality and future orientation. Without doubt it was this exemplary mother who first initiated Gonxha into the faith and the practice of Christian virtues.
The fervent parish community offered Gonxha favorable conditions for her continued growth in faith. An intelligent, gifted, and sociable girl, she found ample scope for employing her talents and abilities in all parish activities — particularly in the Sodality of Mary, the parish choir, and the mission group. At the age of twelve, Gonxha felt called to the religious life. Under the guidance of her spiritual director, Fr. Franjo Jambreković, S.J., she decided to enter the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Rathfarnham) with the intention of “becoming a missionary and spending myself for Jesus who died for all.” In September 1928, barely eighteen years old and having completed the fifth year of secondary school, Gonxha left her home for Ireland. Despite the great sorrow at her daughter’s departure, her mother’s parting message was: “Put your hand in His, walk alone with Him, and never look back. Go straight ahead, for if you look back you will return home.” These were the last words she spoke to her daughter, for they would never meet again.
Gonxha arrived at Rathfarnham Abbey in early October 1928 and became a postulant, receiving the religious name Sister Teresa; she chose Saint Teresa of Lisieux as her patron. She departed for India with two companions on 1 December 1928 and arrived in Calcutta — the city that would later be linked with her name — on 6 January 1929. After two years of formation in the novitiate at Darjeeling, Sister Teresa made her temporary profession in May 1931. She was sent to the Loreto Entally community in Calcutta and taught at St. Mary’s, the Bengali secondary school for girls. Among her other responsibilities, the young and zealous religious also took charge of another Loreto Bengali school, St. Teresa’s, situated on Lower Circular Road, which required her to travel daily by rickshaw. These daily journeys through Calcutta gave her the opportunity to observe at close quarters the poverty and suffering of the city. In May 1937, Sister Teresa made her perpetual profession as a sister of the Loreto Order and resumed her customary duties at St. Mary’s. She taught catechism and geography, and in 1944 became headmistress of the school. As a young religious, she distinguished herself by her charity, generosity, courage, capacity for the hardest work, a natural talent for organization, and a joyful character. The sisters of the community, as well as the students and boarders of St. Mary’s, loved and admired her. Mother Teresa was rather frail and her health was not robust in those years, yet she carried out her duties with complete disregard for herself.
On 10 September 1946, while travelling to Darjeeling for the annual retreat, Mother Teresa received what she herself called “the call within the call.” Over the following ten months, through interior locutions and several interior visions, Jesus asked her to found a religious community dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor, in order to satisfy His thirst for love and for souls. She presented her inspiration for the judgment of her spiritual director and for the discernment of Archbishop Périer of Calcutta. Both guided her with great prudence and, after much prayer and reflection, permitted her to take the next step.
Mother Teresa left Loreto Entally on 16 August 1948, having obtained an indult of exclaustration from the Sacred Congregation for Religious. She first attended a brief course in first aid at the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna; then returned to Calcutta in December 1948, where the Little Sisters of the Poor offered her hospitality. A few days before Christmas she began her work in the city’s slums, visiting the sick, gathering and instructing street children, and opening the first schools and dispensaries. Her personal diary shows that the hardships and sufferings of those early days were great, but she persevered in doing God’s will. The opening of the diary, dated 16 February 1949, reads:
Oggi ho imparato una bella lezione: la povertà dei poveri deve essere veramente dura per loro. Sono andata in giro, cercando un alloggio. Ho camminato fino a che le gambe e le braccia mi hanno fatto male. Ho pensato che anche i poveri devono provare dolore nel corpo e nell’anima, mentre cercano una casa, cibo, aiuto… Per mia libera scelta, mio Dio, e per amor Tuo, desidero rimanere e compiere qualunque sia la Tua volontà su di me. Non ho consentito nemmeno ad una lacrima di scendere. Se pure arrivassi a soffrire ancor più d’ora, voglio sempre compiere la Tua santa volontà. Questa è la notte oscura della nascita della Congregazione. Mio Dio, donami coraggio ora – in questo momento – per perseverare nel seguire la Tua chiamata.
“Today I learned a good lesson: the poverty of the poor must be truly hard for them. I went about looking for lodgings. I walked until my legs and arms ached. I thought how the poor too must suffer in body and soul when they go seeking a home, food, help… Of my own free will, my God, and for love of You, I wish to remain and do whatever is Your will over me. I did not allow even one tear to fall. Even if I should suffer still more than now, I always want to do Your holy will. This is the dark night of the birth of the Congregation. My God, give me courage now — at this moment — to persevere in following Your call.”
God rewarded her great sacrifices with vocations, benefactors, and a flourishing apostolate. On 7 October 1950, the new Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was officially erected as a Religious Institute of the Archdiocese of Calcutta. On 22 August 1952, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, patroness of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa opened her first home for the dying, which she named Nirmal Hriday — “Pure Heart.” Nirmal Hriday is commonly known as Mother Teresa’s “first love.” For her, every sick and dying patient was “Jesus under His disfigured Face,” toward whom she could turn her love for Him into action. In 1955, Mother Teresa opened Shishu Bhavan, the first home for abandoned and malnourished children. In 1957, she opened a shelter for lepers.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Mother Teresa extended her work both in Calcutta and throughout India. In July 1965, a mission house was founded in Cocorote, Venezuela, and soon afterwards — in 1968 — houses were opened in Europe (at Tor Fiscale, on the outskirts of Rome) and in Africa (at Tabora, Tanzania). As the number of Missionaries of Charity grew, Mother Teresa was able to spread her mission throughout the world. She opened houses in Australia, the Middle East, and North America, establishing the first novitiate outside Calcutta in London. By 1979 there were already 165 mission houses scattered across the world.
To meet the growing needs of the apostolate, Mother Teresa founded the Missionary Brothers of Charity (in 1963) and, in subsequent years, the contemplative branches (Sisters in 1976 and Brothers in 1979) and the priestly branch (in 1984). During this period, a great number of laypeople also began to wish to share in her apostolate, and so the “International Association of Co-Workers of Mother Teresa” was born, with an interreligious character. In response to requests from many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also gave rise to the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests as a “little way of holiness” for those who wished to share her charism and spirituality.
Beginning in 1979 with the foundation in Zagreb, the Missionaries of Charity also reached the communist countries. During the 1980s, and before the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the Missionaries of Charity opened houses in almost all communist countries, including several foundations in the Soviet Union. Despite repeated attempts, however, Mother Teresa never succeeded in opening a mission house in China. On Christmas Eve 1985, Mother Teresa opened the first house for AIDS patients in New York. Others would follow in the United States and elsewhere.
Until the 1990s, despite her advanced age and growing health problems, Mother Teresa travelled throughout the world to attend the religious profession and priestly ordination ceremonies of members of her religious family, to open new houses, to serve the poor in regions struck by disaster, and to take part in countless public gatherings. She continued to found new communities in South Africa, Albania, Cuba, and war-devastated Iraq. By 1997 the sisters had reached almost 4,000 members and approximately 600 houses had been founded in 120 countries worldwide.
During these years of rapid expansion of her mission, the world began to turn its attention to Mother Teresa and the work she had set in motion. Numerous honours — beginning with the Indian Padmashri Award in 1962 and the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 — recognized her work, while the media began to follow her activities with ever-growing interest. She received everything, both recognition and attention, “for the glory of God and in the name of the poor.”
After a final journey from Rome to New York and Washington in declining health, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta in July 1997. On 5 September she died at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Her body was moved to the Church of Saint Thomas, adjacent to the Loreto Convent where she had arrived nearly sixty-nine years before. Hundreds of thousands of people from every walk of life and religion came from India and abroad to pay their respects. She received a State funeral on 13 September, and after the funeral cortège processed through the streets of Calcutta, she was buried at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity; her tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for people of all faiths.
History of the Cause
a) Towards Beatification
Less than two months after the death of Mother Teresa, the Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry D’Souza, petitioned the Congregation for the Causes of Saints for a dispensation from article 9a of the “Norms to be observed in diocesan inquiries for the Causes of Saints” — the norm that requires a waiting period of five years from the death of a Servant of God before initiating a Cause of Canonization. After the Indult was granted on 12 December 1998 and all the required preliminaries had been completed, the Diocesan Inquiry into the life, virtues, and reputation for holiness of Mother Teresa opened in Calcutta on 26 July 1999 and concluded on 15 August 2001.
On 26 April 2002, the Positio super virtutibus was submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
On 28 June 2002, the Special Congress of Theological Consultors was held, and on 24 September 2002, the Ordinary Session of Cardinals and Bishops.
On 20 December 2002, Pope Saint John Paul II promulgated the Decree on the heroic virtues of Mother Teresa.
The Diocesan Inquiry into the alleged miracle was conducted at the Diocesan Curia of Calcutta from November 1999 to January 2002, and concerned the inexplicable healing of Mrs. Monica Besra from a tumorous abdominal swelling.
The case was submitted to examination by the Experts of the Medical Consulta on 19 June 2002, and to the Theological Consultors on 6 September 2002.
At the Ordinary Session of 1 October 2002, the Cardinals and Bishops acknowledged the inexplicability of the event and the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God.
On 20 December 2002, the Holy Father John Paul II recognized that the case in question had been a true miracle to be attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was beatified by him in Rome in St. Peter’s Square on 19 October 2003.
b) Towards Canonization
For the Canonization, the alleged miraculous case of the rapid, complete, lasting, and sequela-free recovery of an adult man suffering from “multiple supra- and infra-tentorial abscesses with triventricular hydrocephalus” was presented to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. His healing was attributed to the intercession of the Blessed, and a Diocesan Inquiry into the case was conducted at Santos in Brazil from 19 to 26 June 2015, whose juridical validity was recognized by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints by Decree of 2 July 2015. The event was examined by the Medical Consulta of the Dicastery, which on 10 September 2015 deemed the healing scientifically inexplicable. The Special Congress of Theological Consultors was held on 8 October 2015. The Ordinary Session of Cardinals and Bishops on 15 December 2015 judged the healing to be a true miracle.
The Holy Father Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the Decree on the miracle on 17 December 2015.