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Mother House, Kolkata
Photo: Wikimedia Commons · Mother Teresa

Mother House, Kolkata

Mother Teresa · India

In 1946, on a train journey, the teacher Sister Teresa felt a 'call within a call' to serve the poorest of the poor. She left her convent school, put on a simple white sari with blue borders and went into the slums of Calcutta. In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity, who cared for the dying, orphans and people with leprosy. Today her simple tomb lies in the Mother House, where you can also see the small room where she lived.

Did you know?

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and asked for the usual banquet to be cancelled so the money could go to the poor.

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An inspiring story

A call on the train

What if your calling comes on an ordinary train journey?

On 10 September 1946 Sister Teresa, a teacher at a girls' school in Calcutta, was on a train to Darjeeling for a retreat. On that journey she felt what she called 'a call within a call': to leave her safe convent and serve Jesus among the poorest of the poor. Why leave everything she loved? Because she had seen the poverty on the streets outside her school walls, and could no longer look away. In 1948 she walked out wearing a simple white sari with a blue border, and started by teaching slum children, writing letters in the dirt with a stick.

No building, no money, no plan. Just a stick, the ground and children. That was enough to begin.

I thirst.John 19:28, written in every chapel of her sisters

Sources

Journeys through this place