Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born on September 26, 1910, as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, to an Albanian family in Skopje, a province of the Ottoman Empire at that time, now the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. From an early age she was fascinated by the biographies of missionaries and was convinced that she would dedicate her life to missionary service to the Church. In 1929 she joined the Loreto Sisters in India under the name Teresa and remained in the order for nearly 20 years, engaged in teaching in the Calcutta area. In 1947 she became an Indian citizen. However, her life changed during a train ride from Calcutta to Darjeeling in 1946. She had long been concerned about the extreme poverty in Calcutta. At this point, she suddenly felt called to serve the poorest of the poor and to live with them to care for them. To this end, after receiving basic medical training, she opened her first school in 1949. A year later, she received permission from the Vatican to found a new order called the “Missionaries of Charity.” From that small beginning, the Missionaries of Charity grew into an order of more than 4,000 nuns, who ran and served in hospitals, shelters, orphanages and schools all over the world. Mother Teresa was not afraid to put herself in harm’s way to serve those around her. She brokered a temporary truce between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants during the siege of Beirut in 1982. Thanks to this truce, 37 children in hospitals that were in the line of fire were saved. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She accepted the award but requested that no banquet be held in honor of it, and that the money be used to help the poor in Calcutta. Despite her many charitable works, Mother Teresa struggled greatly in her faith; she felt separated from God and unable to find Him in her life. Those involved in promoting her canonization have compared this inner struggle, which she called “the dark night,” to Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Immediately after Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, the process for her beatification was begun, something that was not supposed to happen until five years after her death. Pope John Paul II himself approved this rule and beatified her after recognizing the miracle she performed in curing an Indian man of cancer. After recognizing the miraculous cure of a Brazilian man with multiple cancers, thanks to the intercession of Mother Teresa by his parish priest, Pope Francis will canonize her on September 4 this year, the day the Jubilee Year of Mercy for charity workers and volunteers ends. (RV 15/03/2016)