On September 4, 2016, the Catholic Church canonized Mother Teresa, presenting her as a disciple of Christ and a model of one who received God's mercy and shared it with her neighbors.
Although a decade has passed since Saint Teresa of Kolkata (Mother Teresa) was canonized, her spirit of love and mercy toward the poor and abandoned continues to live on in corners of the world today.
The Catholic Church canonized Mother Teresa on September 4, 2016. The Church proclaimed her a saint not because of the external achievement of growing the Missionaries of Charity into a global religious order, but because of a life spent surrendering herself to God's will and sharing His mercy with the most marginalized.
At the age of 18, Mother Teresa left her hometown—present-day Skopje, North Macedonia—to join the Sisters of Loreto. Later, while working as a teacher in Kolkata, India, she experienced a life-changing moment on September 10, 1946, while aboard a train bound for Darjeeling. It is said that through this experience—which she later described as a "call within a call"—Jesus Christ asked her to leave the school, go out into the streets, and personally care for the poor and the abandoned.
After leaving her convent in 1948, Mother Teresa began caring for the dying on the streets, washing children, and distributing food to the hungry. On October 7, 1950, the Missionaries of Charity was officially established as a religious congregation within the Archdiocese of Kolkata.
The Missionaries of Charity grew rapidly thereafter; by the time of Mother Teresa’s passing in 1997, the order had over 4,000 members active in 610 locations across 123 countries. Although she became a global figure—receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, among other honors—she always emphasized that all the fruits of her and the order's labor originated from God.
Mother Teresa often said, "Let us love one another just as God loves each one of us." For her, love did not remain merely in words or thoughts; it was expressed through concrete actions—washing, holding the hands of, and smiling at those whom society had turned away.
Mother Teresa was not a perfect human being, and her work faced criticism. Yet, she sought and accepted valid criticism and, above all, never wavered in her calling to share God’s love and mercy with the humblest and most abandoned people.
Even today, as we mark the 10th anniversary of her canonization, the ongoing work of the Missionaries of Charity invites us to reflect on the message left by her life: that God’s mercy is revealed through small acts of love extended to the most marginalized.