The bustling metropolis of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, is where a diminutive woman at the tender age of 19 arrived in 1929 from her birthplace of Skopje and taught in a girls school.
With her tireless work among the poorest of poor, the dying and the destitute, the lepers and orphans, Mother Teresa acquired the sobriquet “saint of the gutters”.
On Sunday (September 4) Mother Teresa will be made an official saint of the Roman Catholic Church, just 19 years after her death.
She began her Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with just 12 nuns. Now, the order has 4,500 nuns across 133 countries and its sisters in their distinctive blue-bordered saris are a common site in her adopted city, home to 15 million people.
At Nirmal Hriday (Tender Heart) the first care shelter set up by her in 1950, the nuns of her order continue to provide love and care to the dying and destitute in the same vein she demonstrated throughout her life.
Sister Nicole, the nun heading the center, said their volunteers are always on the lookout for people desperate for help on the streets of Kolkata, at the railway platforms and around its slums.
The people are picked up from the streets, brought to the center and given a proper bath, their wounds are tended, and they are given a haircut, shave and clean clothes to wear, as well as from regular meals and basic medication, she said.
Most of the 100 or more inmates at the center are too weak to walk or feed themselves so volunteers help them with their basic chores.
Some of them lovingly massage the lepers while others give them a shave or a helping hand to walk.
A Nobel peace prize winner, Mother Teresa is seen as one of the most influential women in the Church's 2,000-year history.
Hundreds of thousands of faithful are expected to attend the canonization service for the tiny nun, which will be led by Pope Francis in front of St. Peter's basilica.
Mother Teresa was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia. She became a nun at 16 and moved to India in 1929, creating her mission in 1950.
The Roman Catholic Church has more than 10,000 saints, many of whom had to wait centuries before their elevation.
But Mother Teresa, one of the most recognizable faces of the 20th century, was put on the fast track to sainthood after dying of a heart attack on Sept. 5, 1997.
The late Pope John Paul II bent Vatican rules to allow the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be launched two years after her death instead of the usual five, and she was beatified in 2003.
The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven and able to intercede with God to perform miracles. She has been credited with two miracles, both involving the healing of sick people.
The latest involved a Brazilian, Marcilio Andrino, who unexpectedly recovered from a severe brain infection in 2008. He and his wife Fernanda will attend the canonization, which is considered the highlight of Pope Francis's Holy Year of Mercy.
REUTERS