On this day Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order and The Missionaries of Charity was founded in the city. Its primary aim was to provide love and care to the most neglected: the poor, the homeless, the sick, the abandoned and the dying.
The Missionaries of Charity began as a small organisation with 12 members in Kolkata, which by 2020 had grown to 5,167 members working in 139 countries in 760 homes. Among these homes, 244 were in India. In 1952, Mother Teresa established the hospice Nirmal Hriday, where the terminally ill could die with dignity. The order started several centres for the aged, the blind and the disabled. The order also built Shanti Nagar, a leper colony near Asansol. Mother Teresa received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979 and was canonised by the Roman Catholic Church in 2016.
