Missionaries of Charity, their friends and supporters marked the 10th anniversary of their founder’s canonization with a festive Mass at the St. Therese Chinese Catholic Church worship site of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta Parish on Sept. 5, her feast day.
The church was decorated with light blue bunting and banners displaying photos of the Missionaries of Charity’s ministry in Chicago. Auxiliary Bishop Mark Bartosic and priests wore vestments bearing Mother Teresa’s image and the words “St. Teresa, pray for us” in English and Mandarin.
Students dressed in uniform from St. Therese Chinese Catholic School took on roles in the liturgy with one youngster, Samara Gomez, 7, dressed in a costume of the Missionaries of Charity.
Samara brought up gifts representing Mother Teresa’s ministry after Communion and, after Mass, posed for photos with Missionaries of Charity.
The Missionaries of Charity eschew media interviews as part of their rule of life so were not interviewed for this story.
The Feast of St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata is celebrated each year on Sept. 5, the anniversary of her death in 1997. Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa on Sept. 4, 2016.
Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago celebrated that occasion with three Masses — one at St. John Cantius Church just hours after the canonization Mass was held in Rome, one at St. Malachy Church and one at Holy Name Cathedral.
Born in 1910 to an ethnic Albanian family in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa went to India in 1929 as a Sister of Loreto and became an Indian citizen in 1947.
On a train ride from Kolkata to Darjeeling for her annual retreat in 1946, she had a mystical experience where she felt the Lord speaking to her and calling her to directly work for the poor. Over the weeks and months following, he revealed to her through inner locutions how he thirsted for someone to love him through the poor.
A year later, she left the community to live among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Kolkata. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian efforts. During her acceptance speech she identified abortion as one of the greatest destroyers of peace.
“For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other?” Mother Teresa said. “Even in the Scripture it is written: Even if mother could forget her child — I will not forget you — I have carved you in the palm of my hand.”
Her influence is worldwide. The order has more than 5,500 active and contemplative sisters, priests and brothers. As of 2024, the Missionaries of Charity had 754 homes in 138 countries.
The members of the congregation take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but the vow of poverty is stricter than in other congregations because, as Mother Teresa explained, “to be able to love the poor and know the poor, we must be poor ourselves.” Members take a fourth vow of “wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.”
In 1969, in response to growing interest of laypeople who wanted to be associated with her work, an informally structured, ecumenical International Association of Co-Workers of Mother Teresa was formed.
In Chicago, the convent for the contemplative sisters is located on the campus of St. Procopius Church at 1629 S. Allport St. while the active sisters have their convent at 2325 W. 24th Place.
Mother Teresa visited Chicago and St. Malachy Church several times, even acting as a godmother to one of its parishioners.
The Missionaries of Charity came to Chicago in 1983, when Cardinal Joseph Bernardin welcomed six sisters to St. Malachy Parish on the city’s West Side. It was the 10th mission for the community in the United States.
Three years earlier, Father Stephen Mangan, then pastor of St. Malachy, wrote to Mother Teresa asking her to send her sisters to his parish, the Chicago Tribune reported. She replied a few months later saying she would send them when she could.
The sisters quickly became known for walking the neighborhood, praying with residents and serving those in need.
Chicago Catholic chronicled their arrival on the West Side in the March 25, 1983, issue. While others got settled at the church, two sisters walked through the neighborhood, which at the time was home to the Henry Horner Homes housing project. The reporter wrote that the area was a “ghetto” with “gutted, ransacked dwellings along the litter-filled gutters of Madison Street.”
When asked if they feared living and walking in neighborhoods prone to violence, Sister Paula Maria told the reporter: “We’re not afraid of violent places. We have nuns in places worse than this — like Lebanon — and no sisters have ever been hurt. We pray our rosaries to Mary everywhere we walk and she watches over us as we go. God has to watch out for us. We’re his hands and he has to guard us. We are doing his job. He has to do his.”
The neighborhood has improved since the sisters first arrived 43 years ago, but the poor remain and the sisters serve them faithfully at the St. Joseph’s Home, 115 N. Oakley Blvd., soup kitchen six days a week from 8:30 to 11 a.m.
The sisters also lead a rosary walk on Monday afternoons through Chinatown with friends and parishioners, followed by a holy hour at St. Therese Church.