Mother house

 

Mother house

The Missionaries of Charity (Latin: Congregatio Missionariarum a Caritate) may be a Catholic (Latin Church) religious congregation established in 1950 by Teresa , now known within the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. In 2020, it consisted of 5,167 religious sisters. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "M.C." A member of the congregation must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and thus the fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor."[1] Today, the order consists of both contemplative and active branches in several countries.

Missionaries look after those that include refugees, former prostitutes, the unsound , sick children, abandoned children, lepers, people with AIDS, the aged, and convalescent. They have schools that are pass by volunteers to point out abandoned street children and run soup kitchens also as other services according to the community needs. These services are provided, for free of charge , to people no matter their religion or social station .

On October 7, 1950,[2] Teresa and therefore the small community formed by her former pupils was labelled because the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, and thus received the permission from the Diocese of Calcutta to spot as a Catholic organization. Their mission was to worry for (in Mother Teresa's words) "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people that feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." It began as a small community with 12 members in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and in 2020 had 5,167 members serving in 139 countries in 760 homes, with 244 of these homes in India.[3] The sisters run orphanages, homes for those dying of AIDS, charity centres worldwide, and look after refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine in Asia, Africa, Latin America , North America, Europe and Australia. They have 19 homes in Kolkata (Calcutta) alone which include homes for ladies , orphaned children and houses for the dying; a faculty for street children, and a leper colony.

In 1963, Brother Andrew (formerly Ian Travers-Ballan) founded the Missionary Brothers of Charity in Australia along side Teresa .[4]
In 1965, by granting a Decree of Praise, Pope Paul VI granted Mother Teresa's request to expand her congregation to other countries. The Congregation began to grow rapidly, with new homes opening everywhere the world . The congregation's first house outside India was in Venezuela, others followed in Rome and Tanzania and worldwide.
In 1979 the contemplative branch of the Brothers was added and in 1984 a priest branch, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers,[5] was founded by Teresa with Fr. Joseph Langford, combining the vocation of the Missionaries of Charity with the Ministerial Priesthood. As with the Sisters, the Fathers live a really simple lifestyle without television, radios or items of convenience. They neither smoke nor drink alcohol and beg for his or her food. They make a visit to their families every five years but don't take annual holidays.[6] Lay Catholics and non-Catholics constitute the Co-Workers of Teresa , the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity.

The first home of the Missionaries of Charity in the United States was established in the South Bronx,[7] New York, where in 2019 they had convents for both their active and contemplative branches,[8] and had placed 108 sisters in their province that stretches from Quebec to Washington, DC.[9] Their first rural mission within the us , in 1982, was in one of the poorest, former coal

mining areas of Kentucky, where they still serve.[10][11] within the USA, the Missionaries of Charity are affiliated with the Council of Major Superiors of girls Religious, a body of female religious, representing 20% of American religious sisters. They are identified by the wearing of religious habits, and loyalty to church teaching. By 1996, the organisation was operating 517 missions in additional than 100 countries.[12]
In 1990, Teresa asked to resign as head of the Missionaries but was soon voted back in as general . On March 13, 1997, six months before Mother Teresa's death, Sister Mary Nirmala Joshi was elected the new general of the Missionaries of Charity. In April 2009 Sister Mary Prema was elected to succeed Sister Nirmala, during a general chapter held in Kolkata.[13]
The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients within the Home for the Dying in Calcutta was the topic of dialogue within the mid-1990s.[14] Some British observers, on the basis of short visits, drew unfavourable comparisons with the quality of care available in hospices within the uk . 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 during a later issue of The Lancet on the bottom that they did not appreciate of Indian conditions, specifically the very fact that government regulations effectively precluded the utilization of morphine outside large hospitals.

Criticism

A British former volunteer at the house , Robin Fox (now editor of British medical journal The Lancet) objected that syringes were rinsed in cold water and reused; that inmates were given cold baths; which aspirin was administered to people with terminal cancer.[26] Fox also noted, however, that the residents were "eating heartily and doing well", which the sisters and volunteers focused on cleanliness, tending wounds and sores, and providing loving kindness.[27] The controversy remains thanks to the charity's not sterilizing needles and failing to form proper diagnoses, as put by Dr. Jack Preger, "If one wants to offer love, understanding and care, one uses sterile needles."[28]

In 2018 all child care homes in India travel by the Missionaries of Charity were inspected by the Ministry of girls and Child Development following allegations that two staff members at a Jharkhand home sold babies for adoption. A sister and a caseworker employed there have been arrested. Sister Konsalia Balsa and caseworker Anima Indwar were accused of getting already sold three babies from the house , which provides shelter for pregnant, unmarried women, and of trying to sell a boy baby for roughly £1325.[29] The Missionaries of Charity had discontinued its participation in adoption services in India three years earlier over religious objections to the country's new adoption rules.