On 7 October 1950,
Mother Teresa and the small community formed by her former pupils was labelled as the
Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, and thus received the permission from the Diocese of Calcutta to identify as a Catholic organization. Their mission was to care for (in Mother Teresa's words) "the hungry, the naked, the
homeless, the crippled, the blind, the
lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." It began as a small community with 12 members in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and in 2023 had 5,750 members serving in 139 countries in 760 homes, with 244 of these homes in India. The sisters run orphanages, homes for those dying of AIDS, charity centres worldwide and care for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor, homeless and also victims of natural disasters, epidemics, famine in
Asia,
Africa,
Latin America,
North America,
Europe and
Australia. They have 19 homes in
Kolkata (Calcutta) alone which include homes for women, orphaned children and homes for the dying; a school for street children, and a
leper colony. In 1963, Brother Andrew (formerly Ian Travers-Ballan) founded the Missionary Brothers of Charity in Australia along with Mother Teresa. In 1965, by granting a Decree of Praise,
Pope Paul VI granted Mother Teresa's request to expand her congregation to other countries. The Congregation started to grow rapidly, with new homes opening all over the globe. The congregation's first house outside India was in
Venezuela, others followed in
Rome and
Tanzania and worldwide. In 1979 the contemplative branch of the Brothers was added and in 1984 a priest branch, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, was founded by Mother Teresa with
Fr. Joseph Langford, combining the vocation of the Missionaries of Charity with the
Ministerial Priesthood. As with the Sisters, the Fathers live a very simple lifestyle without television, radios or items of convenience. They neither smoke nor drink alcohol and beg for their food. They make a visit to their families every five years but do not take annual holidays.
Lay Catholics and non-Catholics constitute the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. The first home of the Missionaries of Charity in the
United States was established in the
South Bronx,
New York, where in 2019 they had convents for both their active and contemplative branches, and had placed 108 sisters in their province that stretches from Quebec to Washington, DC. Their first rural mission in the United States, in 1982, was in one of the poorest, former coal mining areas of
Kentucky, where they still serve. In the US, the Missionaries of Charity are affiliated with the
Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, a body of female religious, representing 20% of American religious sisters. They are identified by the wearing of religious habits, and loyalty to church teaching. By 1996, the organisation was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries. In 1990, Mother Teresa asked to resign as head of the Missionaries but was soon voted back in as
Superior General. On 13 March 1997, six months before Mother Teresa's death,
Sister Mary Nirmala Joshi was elected the new Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity. In April 2009, Sister
Mary Prema was elected to succeed Sister Nirmala, during a
general chapter held in Kolkata. The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in the Home for the Dying in Calcutta was the subject of discussion in the mid-1990s. Some British observers, on the basis of short visits, drew unfavourable comparisons with the standard of care available in
hospices in the United Kingdom. Remarks made by Dr. Robin Fox relative to the lack of full-time medically trained personnel and the absence of strong
analgesics were published in a brief memoir in an issue of
The Lancet in 1994. These remarks were criticised in a later issue of
The Lancet on the ground that they failed to take account of Indian conditions, specifically the fact that government regulations effectively precluded the use of morphine outside large hospitals. In
Phoenix, Arizona, the sisters' accommodation for 40 homeless men is funded by a clothier, featured in
Vogue, who grew up within a few blocks of Mother Teresa's original home for the dying destitute in
Kalighat, Calcutta.
Princess Diana, who was very close to Mother Teresa, wrote that she found in her "the direction I've been searching for all these years". The Missionaries of Charity sisters were particularly hard hit by the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19, as in places they continued to distribute food and minister to the poor who had been affected. In April 2022, Sister Mary Joseph was elected to succeed Sister Mary Prema as superior general of the order, with Sister Mary Christie elected as assistant superior general. In March 2016 in
Aden,
Yemen, sixteen people were shot and killed in a home for the elderly operated by the Missionaries of Charity. Among the dead were four missionary sisters: Sisters Marguerite and Reginette from
Rwanda, Sister Anselm from
India and Sister Judit from
Kenya. According to Bishop
Paul Hinder of the
Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia, their superior escaped harm by hiding. Bishop Hinder described the attack as "religiously-motivated". A
Salesian Syro-Malabar priest who was living at the facility, Fr.
Tom Uzhunnalil of
Bangalore,
India, was taken prisoner by the attackers. On
Good Friday, 25 March 2016, several media outlets reported that Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil had been
crucified by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. However, Bishop Hinder indicated he had strong indications that the priest was alive and still being held by his captors. In early September 2017 Fr. Uzhunnalil was rescued after 18 months in captivity, and first sent to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. ==Becoming a Missionary of Charity==