A calling within a calling
Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910, she joined the Sisters of Loreto as a young woman and taught school in Kolkata for nearly two decades. In 1946, she described a second calling — what she called "the call within the call" — to leave the convent and serve the poorest people in the city directly.
Founding the Missionaries of Charity
In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order devoted to caring for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved." The order grew from a handful of sisters in Kolkata into a global organization.
Small things with great love
Mother Teresa became known worldwide for a simple teaching: that we can't all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church in 2016.
