From One Calcutta House to a Global Congregation within a Lifetime

The congregation Mother Teresa founded in Calcutta in 1950 grew from a single house into an international presence at a pace unusual even among successful modern foundations, expanding across India within the following decade and then beyond it, so that by the time of its founder's death in 1997 the Missionaries of Charity operated in dozens of countries on nearly every continent. The order also grew institutionally beyond its founding branch of sisters, adding a brothood, the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, in 1963 for men drawn to the same mission among the very poor, and later contemplative branches for members called to a more enclosed life of prayer supporting the same charism.

International recognition arrived well before the congregation's full later growth, most visibly when Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, an honour that brought her order's work with the dying and destitute of Calcutta to an audience far wider than the Catholic religious world alone. Her own canonisation followed in 2016, under Pope Francis, formally recognising a foundress whose congregation had already, well before her death, become one of the most recognisable active religious communities in the modern Catholic Church.