Novena to St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa)

St. Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), known universally as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje (then part of the Ottoman Empire, now North Macedonia) to ethnic Albanian Catholic parents, she joined the Sisters of Loreto at eighteen and was sent to teach in Calcutta. In 1946, during a train ride to Darjeeling for a retreat, she experienced what she called 'the call within the call' — Christ's specific invitation to leave the Loreto convent and serve the poorest of the poor in the Calcutta slums. The Missionaries of Charity were founded in 1950 and grew into one of the most globally recognizable religious orders, with 5,000+ sisters in 139 countries by the time of her death. Mother Teresa became the most famous Catholic woman of the twentieth century — Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1979), recipient of the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian honor), confidante of popes and presidents. Her posthumous revealing — through her published letters to her spiritual directors, Come Be My Light — of decades of spiritual darkness and felt-absence of God, did not diminish her witness; it deepened it. She continued the work of love in radical fidelity even when she could not feel God's consolation, becoming a witness for every Catholic who has experienced spiritual aridity. Pope Francis canonized her on September 4, 2016, in St. Peter's Square. The novena to St. Teresa of Calcutta is appropriate for: any situation involving the poor, the sick, the dying, or the marginalized; vocational discernment; spiritual darkness or aridity (Mother Teresa is the contemporary patroness of those who pray without feeling God); the family of someone dying in difficult circumstances; and the protection of life from conception to natural death (her vocal pro-life witness was a hallmark of her public ministry).