Saint Teresa of Calcutta
As an old woman, she was everyone’s idea of a living saint, feeding, cleaning, and comforting the most desperately poor and sick……But the commitment Agnes Teresa felt to individual charity began decades earlier, when she was a child. Her mother cared for a sick widow. She went to wash and feed the widow and her six children twice a day. When her mother could not go, Agnes went. And when the widow died, the children moved into Agnes’ house as if they were family.At 18, Agnes left for the convent and within a year she was on her way to India to study and teach. Agnes took the name Sister Teresa and became one of the most popular teachers in her school.But she was troubled. As she walked through the slums of Calcutta, she could not forget her mother’s many examples of individual charity. She knew that God expected the same from her. Soon she founded her own order and became known as Mother Teresa. (Solanus Casey Center, 2026)