10 years after canonization, Mother Teresa’s charity still inspires
Celebrates the 10‑year anniversary of Mother Teresa’s canonization and her lasting influence through the Missionaries of Charity. Highlights her modest upbringing, early religious training, and shift from teaching to founding an order devoted to the poorest. Notes the global reach of the order—over 4,000 workers at 610 sites in 123 countries at the time of her death. Emphasizes the Catholic Church’s endorsement of Mother Teresa as a model disciple of Christ and exemplar of God’s mercy.
26 days ago
Ten years after Mother Teresa’s canonization, the Missionaries of Charity continue to be presented as a global expression of her commitment to serving people living in poverty, illness and social exclusion. The organization’s work grew from her personal ministry in Kolkata into an international religious institute, while her legacy remains closely tied to both Catholic praise and public criticism.
Mother Teresa was born in what is now Skopje, North Macedonia, and grew up in a family where her mother, Drana, regularly shared food with poor people, including inviting them into the family home. At 18, she left home to join the Loreto convent in Ireland and later moved to India, where she taught at a school in Kolkata during the 1930s and 1940s.
On Sept. 10, 1946, while traveling by train to Darjeeling, she experienced what she called a “call within a call.” She understood the experience as a request from Jesus to leave teaching and serve poor people directly, particularly those excluded from society.
After receiving permission from Kolkata Archbishop Ferdinand Perier in January 1948, she left the convent and began working in the streets. Her activities included caring for dying people, bathing children and feeding the hungry; twelve former teachers and students from St. Mary’s eventually joined her.
The Missionaries of Charity was formally established as a religious institute for the Archdiocese of Kolkata on Oct. 7, 1950. By the time of Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, the institute had more than 4,000 workers operating at 610 locations in 123 countries.
The article identifies the organization’s central purpose as serving people who were neglected or regarded as “untouchables,” while conveying what Mother Teresa understood as God’s mercy and love. Its work emphasized personal acts of care, including physical touch, bathing and offering companionship to people near death.
Mother Teresa also received major international recognition. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and in 1996 the U.S. Congress designated her an honorary citizen, an honor held by only seven other people at the time.
Mother Teresa was canonized on Sept. 4, 2016. The article says the Catholic Church presented her not primarily as a model of organizational success, but as a disciple who received and shared God’s mercy.
Her approach combined material assistance with an explicitly religious understanding of human need. The article says she believed caring for people’s physical needs was important, while also emphasizing salvation and the spiritual dimension of Christian charity.
Mother Teresa often expressed this outlook by urging people to love one another as God loves them. The article also notes that donations associated with her work were used in part to support hospitals and other forms of practical assistance.
Mother Teresa’s public reputation attracted both admiration and opposition. Critics accused her of using the suffering of others to enhance her image, providing inadequate medical care, focusing excessively on abortion and contraception, and lending legitimacy to controversial political and business figures.
The article rejects those accusations as unfounded, while also stating that Mother Teresa was not beyond criticism and accepted criticism when she believed it identified a genuine problem. It presents her success and that of the Missionaries of Charity as outcomes she attributed to God rather than to personal achievement.
The article portrays Mother Teresa’s lasting influence through the Missionaries of Charity’s international reach and its continued focus on people whom society neglects. Her legacy is described as a combination of direct service, religious devotion and a commitment to treating every person with dignity, regardless of poverty, social status or proximity to death.
Assess Mother Teresa’s canonization as a model of Catholic charity
Mother Teresa’s canonization presents Catholic charity not merely as philanthropy, but as Christ-centered mercy made visible in personal service. Pope Francis portrayed her as a credible model because she united prayer, defense of human dignity, and concrete closeness to the poorest.
Mother Teresa understood service as flowing from communion with Jesus. Pope Francis recalled her saying that prayer placed Christ’s love in her heart, which she then carried to the poor. This prevents charity from becoming activism, self-display, or humanitarian efficiency alone. Catholic charity begins with receiving God’s love and allowing it to shape one’s vision of others.
This also explains why her example remains demanding. The poor are not simply recipients of services or social problems to be managed; they are persons in whom Christ is encountered. The works of mercy make faith “alive and active with charity,” especially when believers recognize Jesus in those who are materially or spiritually needy.
A central feature of Mother Teresa’s model was her direct approach to people whom society ignored: the abandoned, the dying, children, prisoners, the sick, and those living in extreme poverty. Pope Francis emphasized that she did not merely establish institutions; she stooped to individuals in order to restore their dignity and accompanied the dying with tenderness.
This is significant because Catholic charity is not satisfied with impersonal assistance. It involves presence: touching, listening, welcoming, and sharing another person’s vulnerability. The Church’s mercy crosses social barriers because every person retains God-given dignity, regardless of condition, usefulness, religion, or ability to repay.
Mother Teresa’s charity also included a strong defense of human life, especially the unborn and those abandoned at the end of life. Pope Francis described her as defending both unborn children and people discarded by society, insisting that the weakest possess dignity precisely when they are most vulnerable.
Thus her canonization challenges any narrow definition of charity. Christian compassion includes feeding and sheltering the poor, but also defending life, resisting indifference, and confronting social structures that create or perpetuate poverty. Her concern was not merely to make suffering more bearable; it also involved calling the powerful to account for poverty and exclusion.
Pope Francis identified Mother Teresa’s governing principle as “gratuitous love”: love offered without ideological conditions, calculation, or expectation of return, and extended without distinction of language, culture, race, or religion. This reflects the Gospel’s demand to do good even to those unable to repay us.
Her famous emphasis on a smile is not sentimental superficiality. It expresses the conviction that even a small gesture can communicate recognition to someone who has been treated as invisible. Catholic charity is therefore measured not only by scale or efficiency, but by whether it conveys the tenderness and closeness of God.
Mother Teresa’s example should not be interpreted as meaning that personal acts of mercy eliminate the need for social reform. Pope Francis himself connected her service with a denunciation of the poverty created by unjust powers. Her model therefore includes both immediate care for persons and moral concern about the structures that abandon them.
The Church’s recognition of her sanctity does not imply that every administrative decision associated with her institutions is beyond criticism, nor that individual charity alone resolves poverty. The supplied papal texts do not provide evidence for evaluating particular criticisms of her organization. What they do establish is the spiritual principle being commended: faithful service must protect dignity, oppose indifference, and remain close to suffering persons.
Mother Teresa’s canonization is a compelling model of Catholic charity because it joins four elements:
Her legacy is not simply “help the poor.” It is: encounter Christ in the poor, serve them with tenderness, defend their dignity, and allow mercy to challenge both personal indifference and public injustice. In that sense, canonization presents Mother Teresa not as an unreachable humanitarian icon, but as a summons to ordinary Christians to perform concrete works of mercy every day.