Missionaries of Charity

The Missionaries of Charity are distinguished among modern religious congregations by a single added vow that fixes the whole purpose of the order.

The fourth vow

Founded by Mother Teresa in Calcutta in 1950, the congregation binds its sisters by the three usual vows and by a distinctive fourth vow of wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor. That vow is the defining commitment of the order: the sisters run homes for the dying, orphanages, leprosy clinics and shelters, and are recognisable by the white sari edged with three blue stripes. From a single house the congregation spread to over a hundred countries, with later branches of active and contemplative brothers, priests and lay co-workers.

Acclaim and scrutiny

Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was canonised in 2016, and the congregation is among the best-known religious institutes in the world. Its work has also drawn documented criticism over standards of medical care and the management of donations, and the scrutiny is part of the modern record of the order rather than only its acclaim. Holding both, the wide veneration and the specific criticisms, is the honest way to describe a congregation this prominent.

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.