by Emilie Krenn-Grosvenor

This month, we celebrate the feast day of St Teresa of Calcutta, more affectionately and popularly known as Mother Teresa.

Between 1949, when she founded the Missionaries of Charity (MC), and 1984, it is estimated that she brought in over 40,000 sick and dying people from Kolkata’s streets. She oversaw the adoption and education of thousands of children. The mobile leprosy clinics which she provided with the aid of volunteer doctors and her fellow MCs allowed those with Hansen’s disease to continue living in their home communities, rather than be sent to a leprosarium. These same mobile clinics provided treatment and inoculations that helped stop recurring redworm infections among the children living in Kolkata’s bustees (slums).

When Indira Gandhi began a scheme of mass sterilisation in India that disproportionately targeted Dalits, Muslims, and the poor, Mother Teresa wrote letters to Gandhi and began to speak out about Church teaching on abortion. Not without controversy, her speeches, including her acceptance of the Nobel Prize in 1979, were marked by her opposition to abortion, and the alternatives she sought to offer women.

Dr Emilie Krenn-Grosvenor’s PhD thesis examines an enhanced feminist theological engagement with the mariology of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity..