MOTHER Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity this weekend are celebrating 50 years as a religious congregation in the service to the world’s poorest and most marginalised.
Congregations of sisters around Australia, including in Brisbane, will have their own celebrations to mark the anniversary.
Mother Teresa’s work began when she left her own order in Calcutta, the Loreto Sisters, to work among the children, including many babies, and the dying abandoned on the Indian city’s streets.
She gave them food, shelter, basic medicine and much love. She was doing what she was to describe as “something beautiful for God”, seeing each individual’s dignity as a child of God.
Other women joined her and a religious community emerged. It was canonically erected on October 7, 1950.
There are now more than 4000 sisters worldwide, including 16 Australians.
Mother Teresa brought some of her sisters to found the congregation in Australia in 1969, first in the western NSW diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes.
The sisters have particularly worked for the spiritual and material welfare of Aborigines and other marginalised people.
