St. Teresa of Calcutta and the Salesians

St. Teresa of Calcutta and the Salesians

“Do not let anyone separate your love for Christ from your love for the poor”

Fr. Egidio Vigano', rector major, greets Mother Teresa

(ANS – Rome – September 4, 2026) – On September 5 the Church celebrates the liturgical memorial of St. Teresa of Calcutta, the Albanian-born nun who became an Indian citizen, and died on Sept. 5, 1997.  She was canonized by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016.

Behind the most famous image of Mother Teresa – bent over the sick and dying on the streets of Calcutta – lies a very significant story: that of her long and fruitful relationship with the Salesian Congregation, a bond that spanned almost 5 decades of history and which continues, even today, to inspire a shared commitment to serving the poorest of the poor.

A meeting born of service to the poor

The first documented contact between Mother Teresa and a Salesian dates to October 7, 1950, at the very beginning of her mission. It was Fr. Attilio Colussi, pastor of the cathedral of the Most Holy Rosary in Calcutta, who delivered the homily during the Mass marking the religious profession of the first 12 Missionaries of Charity. Fr. Colussi would continue to offer spiritual guidance to Mother Teresa’s sisters until his death in 1988, at the age of 81, often recalling, during retreats and conferences for religious, the origins of Mother Teresa’s vocation to serve the abandoned.

From that 1st meeting, a network of collaboration emerged that spread thruout India and beyond. Fr. Rosario Stroscio, who served as Salesian provincial of Calcutta between 1967 and 1972, became a central figure for the Missionaries of Charity.  When the government authorities issued an unfounded expulsion order against him for alleged “conversions,” it was Mother Teresa herself who intervened, requesting that he be appointed chaplain to her sisters at Prem Dan Tengra, the large convalescent home for tuberculosis patients.  The government not only revoked the expulsion order but also suggested that he be granted Indian citizenship.

“The point of union between you and us is precisely this: the poor”

The high point of this relationship came in the mid-1980s, when Mother Teresa addressed the Salesian Congregation in Rome directly on May 17, 1984 – during a meeting with the members of the 22nd General Chapter, still led by Fr. Egidio Viganò – a speech that remains the most profound and frequently quoted account of that bond.  Mother Teresa spoke gratefully of the support the Salesians offered to her sisters, especially in Calcutta, and described the Salesian vocation as “this beautiful gift from God … to be bearers of God’s love.”

Recalling Don Bosco, she said that the founder of the Salesians “had a great love for the poor; he always saw Jesus in them” – not “as an act of faith,” but out of “a deep conviction.” From that shared charism arose the phrase that sums up the entire relationship between the two religious families:  “The point of union between you and us is precisely this: the poor!”

In that same address, Mother Teresa recounted episodes that would become part of her most widely known testimony: the thousands of people gathered from the streets of Calcutta and accompanied to a peaceful death, the introduction of the daily hour of Eucharistic adoration in 1973 – a decision made following a unanimous request from her sisters during a general chapter of the Missionaries of Charity – and her encounter with a young Hindu couple who donated the savings they had set aside for their wedding feast to the hungry people of Calcutta.  It was on that occasion that she delivered the exhortation which the Salesians still remember today as a true spiritual testament:  “Do not let anyone or anything separate your love for Christ from your love for the poor!  It is so easy to allow someone or something to take away the joy of loving and serving the poor.  They are God’s greatest gift to us!”

Shared works, from Bengal to Yemen

The collaboration between Mother Teresa and the sons of Don Bosco was not limited to words but took the form of concrete works spread across various regions of India.  In Calcutta, when Fr. Anthony Thaiparambil launched the Ashalayam project in 1985 for street children in a rented room in the Howrah Pilkhana slum – the very setting described by Dominique Lapierre in The City of Joy – it was Mother Teresa who proposed the division of tasks that would shape their collaboration:  “We will take care of the girls.  You commit yourselves to serving the boys.”  Mother Teresa personally took part in the blessing of the center’s homes in 1991 and 1995, and until Christmas 1995, the children of Ashalayam would go to sing at the motherhouse of the Missionaries of Charity, where she herself would hand out sweets to them.

In Guwahati, in the northeastern state of Assam, the collaboration began in 1977 when Fr. Joseph Thelekkatt, headmaster of the local Don Bosco School, took a group of pupils to meet Mother Teresa in Calcutta.  From the wish that Mother Teresa expressed on that occasion – to open a home in Guwahati, even in a rented property – a project emerged which involved the chief minister of Assam, Golap Borbora, and which today comprises 3 homes run by the Missionaries of Charity in the city.  The sisters continue to refer to Fr. Thelekkatt, who later became provincial, as “Mother’s son.”

Still in northeastern India, in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, where Christian institutions had been banned since 1977, a chance meeting in Calcutta in 1986 between Mother Teresa and the young Salesian Fr. Jose Chemparathy led to the 1992 opening of the 1st house of the Missionaries of Charity in Pappunalla, near Itanagar, followed by a 2d house in Borduria, which Mother Teresa visited in person in 1993. It was precisely to bless the first church in Arunachal, in Borduria, that Mother Teresa, that year, declined Pope John Paul II’s invitation to accompany him to World Youth Day in Denver, preferring instead to travel to that remote mission accompanied by the archbishop of Guwahati, Thomas Menamparampil – who had known her since 1958, when he was still a Salesian novice at Bandel.  That legacy endures.

 Nearly 50 years of encounters, shared works, and words that transcended the boundaries of their respective congregations remain today, in the liturgical commemoration of September 5, a living legacy for the Salesian Family.  As Mother Teresa herself told the Salesian chapter members in 1984, invoking the intercession of the founder of the oratory:  “St. John Bosco must be very pleased to see that his congregation upholds this honor for the poorest of the poor.”