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Chicago sisters continue legacy of St. Teresa of Kolkata

As indicated by her new name, St. Teresa of Kolkata, canonized September 4 in Rome, Mother Teresa is most closely associated with India. But the order she founded in 1950, the Missionaries of Charity, carries on her work all over the globe.

In the small church attached to a Missionaries of Charity convent on the West Side of Chicago, a stand holds the official canonization portrait of the woman they call simply “Mother.” The more than 4,000 women of the order are all called sisters, the superior of the convent explained, with only one mother.

To that superior, Sister Jesusla, the message of the canonization is not about St. Teresa of Kolkata in particular.