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.
Women in the Catholic Church
Through its support for institutionalised learning, the Catholic Church produced many of the world's first notable women scientists and scholars - including the physicians Trotula of Salerno (11th century) and Dorotea Bucca (d. 1436), the philosopher Elena Piscopia (d. 1684) and the mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi (d. 1799). Four women are honoured as Doctors of the Church: German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila, Italian mystic Catherine of Siena and French nun Thérèse de Lisieux. Other Catholic women have risen to international prominence through charitable mission works and social justice campaigns—as with hospitals pioneer St Marianne Cope, Mother Teresa who served the poor in India, and anti–death penalty campaigner Sister Helen Prejean.