I had to look up the details of Mother Teresa making her start as a missionary to the poor.

Tuesday, 9/6/16

I just checked Mother Teresa’s early life, and found this. Born in Albania, a part of Yugoslavia, in 1910, she was baptized Agnes. At eighteen she joined the Sisters od Loreto, who gave her the name Teresa.

The order sent her to Ireland for a year of learning English. Then, in 1929 they brought he out to Darjeeling in northern India for her novitiate. That completed, they put her into teaching children. After ten years of that, at thirty-nine, she left the Loreto Sisters, donned a blue edged white sari, and took Indian citizenship.

After spending four months in leaning first-aid type medical procedures, she went out to bury herself in the street life of the very poor of Calcutta.

(It was just at that time that Father Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of of Liberation Theology, immersed himself in the world of the extremely poor in Lima Peru.)

With seeming ease, she was able to attract other young ladies, and to receive approval from both Rome and the Indian government. And, she and her Missionaries of Charity found no one fighting with them to take over caring for the unwanted, the unloved, society’s castoffs,  the lepers.


However, in living on the streets, and in begging for food, she found it was as utterly miserable for her as it was for the poor.

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