Saint Teresa of Calcutta

She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, in what is now North Macedonia. Her family was Albanian, her faith was deep from childhood, and by eighteen she had left home for Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto. She never saw her mother or sister again.

For nearly two decades she taught geography at a school in Calcutta, living a comfortable enough life behind convent walls. Then, on a train ride to Darjeeling in 1946, she described receiving what she called 'a call within a call.' She felt God asking her to leave the convent and serve the poorest of the poor, living among them. It took years of discernment and Church approval, but she said yes.

In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity. She started by picking up the dying off the streets of Calcutta so they wouldn't die alone in the gutter. That grew into homes for the dying, orphanages, schools, and eventually thousands of sisters working in over a hundred countries.

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and used her acceptance speech to talk about abortion as the greatest destroyer of peace. She never softened her message to please the crowd.

After her death, her private letters revealed decades of intense spiritual darkness, a sense of God's absence that she carried quietly while continuing to serve. It didn't shake her faith. If anything, it made her more human, and her witness more honest. Pope Francis canonized her on September 4, 2016.