Missionaries of Charity
[6] 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.
The first home of the Missionaries of Charity in the United States was established in the South Bronx,[10] New York, where in 2019 they had convents for both their active and contemplative branches,[11] and had placed 108 sisters in their province that stretches from Quebec to Washington, DC.
On March 13, 1997, six months before Mother Teresa's death, Sister Mary Nirmala Joshi was elected the new Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity.
[17] 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.
[18] 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.
[20] 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.
[1] In July 1998 in Al Hudaydah, Yemen, three Missionaries of Charity, two Indians and a Filipina, were shot and killed as they left a hospital.
[24] In March 2016 in Aden, Yemen, sixteen people were shot and killed in a home for the elderly operated by the Missionaries of Charity.
Those considered possible candidates by the Congregation may enter Aspirancy, focused on learning English (which is the community language) for those who are not from English-speaking countries and religious studies.
[13] In the sixth year, they travel to Rome, Kolkata or Washington D.C. for "Tertianship", further religious study, at the end of which they make their final profession.
A sister's few possessions include: three saris (one to wear, one to wash, one to mend),[28] two or three cotton habits, a girdle, a pair of sandals, a crucifix, and a rosary.
[29] Fox also noted, however, that the residents were "eating heartily and doing well", and that the sisters and volunteers focused on cleanliness, tending wounds and sores, and providing loving kindness.
