Women in the Catholic Church
Mother Teresa of Calcutta established the Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Calcutta in 1948 to work among "the poorest of the poor". Initially founding a school, she then gathered other sisters who "rescued new-born babies abandoned on rubbish heaps; they sought out the sick; they took in lepers, the unemployed, and the mentally ill". Teresa achieved fame in the 1960s and began to establish convents around the world. By the time of her death in 1997, the religious institute she founded had more than 450 centres in over 100 countries.
The Interior Castle
After being ordered to write her autobiography, published posthumously as "La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús" ("The Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus"), Teresa was hesitant to begin writing again on her views of the perfection found in internal prayer. She started writing her seminal work, "Interior Castle", on June 2, 1577, Trinity Sunday, and completed it on the eve of St. Andrew's Day, November 29, 1577; however, there was a five months-long interruption in between, effectively leaving a fortnight each for first and second halves of the book. In August 1586, it was decided to print Teresa's works, which had been collected and preserved by her secretary, the Venerable Ana of Jesus, O.C.D. The Augustinian friar and poet Luis de León, O.E.S.A., was selected as the editor, and finally in 1588 the book was published at Salamanca.