Seventy-five years ago today, Mother Teresa of Calcutta founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious and charitable organization that now serves the poorest of the poor in places like Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, Syria, and South Sudan. The MCs still follow her austere lifestyle and receive no salary or pension. They neither fundraise nor charge for their care, following Mother Teresa’s challenge to “prefer the insecurity of Divine Providence.”
This tradition of courageous self-sacrifice traces back to the 1940s and an unexamined period in Mother Teresa’s life. She was an obscure member of the Sisters of Loreto, teaching on their compound in Calcutta. The world was at war, and India ached for independence from British rule. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims were escalating in the region, and a famine in the Bengal province had killed millions and triggered a massive migration into the city. Japanese military forces were advancing up the Malayan Peninsula, and an attack on Indian soil seemed imminent. In 1942, the British requisitioned the Loreto compound and nearly every Loreto sister evacuated.
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