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.
St Joseph's College, Calcutta
In 1842, Vicar Apostolic Monsignor Carew of Calcutta was keenly aware of the increasing number of British and European children made fatherless by disease or battle. He saw the need for Congregations of Nuns and Brothers to care for and teach these poor children who were termed 'war orphans'. His immediate choice was the Loreto Sisters and the Irish Christian Brothers, founded about forty years earlier by a Waterford businessman, Edmund Rice. However, while the Irish nuns arrived in India in 1844 and took up residence at Middleton Row, the Christian Brothers were unable to spare any Brothers for the Indian Mission. As an alternative, the Brothers offered to train men who would form the nucleus of the new Congregation in India. Accordingly, in September, 1847, two young men, Br. Francis Fitzpatrick and his cousin, Br. Alphonsus Tolan, having completed their short spell of training in Ireland, began their long and wearisome voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to Calcutta, arriving on 15 February 1848. They immediately set up the new community of the Calcutta Brothers in the Cathedral compound, Moorghihatta. Br. Francis took charge of the orphanage at Moorghihatta while Br. Alphonsus travelled each day to look after the boys Free School in Bow Bazar. The little Congregation grew slowly but received a setback when both, Vicar Apostolic Carew and Br. Francis "died" in 1855.