Catholic Church and health care
The famous 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.
Waldseemüller map
Just to the south of "Mallaqua" (Malacca) is the inscription: "hic occisus est S. thomas" (Here St. Thomas was killed), referring to the legend that Saint Thomas the Apostle went to India in 52 AD and was killed there in 72 AD. Waldseemüller had confused Malacca (Melaka) with Mylapore in India. The contemporary understanding of the nature of Columbus' discoveries is demonstrated in the letter written to him by the Aragonese cosmographer and Royal counsellor, Jaume Ferrer, dated 5 August 1495, saying: Divine and infallible Providence sent the great Thomas from the Occident into the Orient in order to declare in India our Holy and Catholic Law; and you, Sir, it has sent to this opposite part of the Orient by way of the Ponient [West] so that by the Divine Will you might arrive in the Orient, and in the farthest parts of India Superior in order that the descendants might hear that which their ancestors neglected concerning the teaching of Thomas ... and very soon you will be by the Divine Grace in the Sinus Magnus, near which the glorious Thomas left his sacred body".