"Saint of the gutters"
Legacy extends beyond India to the world
(CNN) -- Nearly 50 years ago, Mother Teresa found a woman "half eaten by maggots and rats" lying in front of a Calcutta hospital. The diminutive Roman Catholic nun sat with the woman until she died. Soon after, she began a campaign for a shelter for people to die with dignity. Until her death Friday she made a mission of caring for the human castoffs the world wanted to forget.
Accepting the Nobel peace prize in the name of the "unwanted, unloved and uncared for," she wore the same $1 white sari that she had adopted to identify herself with the poor when she founded her order, Missionaries of Charity.
Her impact was mostly felt in her adopted home, Calcutta, where she directed the Missionaries of Charity for nearly 50 years. But the order's work spread across the globe after 1965, when Pope Paul VI authorized its expansion.
She created a global network of homes for the poor, from the hovels of Calcutta to the ghettos of New York, including one of the first homes for AIDS victims.
Misery had a formidable and unrelenting foe in Mother Teresa; Whether it was in Ethiopia tending to the hungry or in the squalid townships of South Africa, Calcutta's "angel of mercy" was there. In 1982, at the height of the seige in Beirut, the frail nun rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerillas.
Her work was almost always praised. But her funding methods met with some criticism. Mother Teresa's causes were financed by public foundations, private donors and scores of prizes.
A 1994 British television documentary, "Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta," accused her of accepting contributions without questioning the source, including the likes of Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Mother Teresa had a short response to such allegations: "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work," she said.
Under Mother Teresa's guidance, the order focused much of its attention on giving comfort to the dying, a task the sisters continue. In an abandoned temple to the Hindu goddess Kali, Mother Teresa founded the Kalighat Home for the Dying. The order established Shanti Nagar (Town of Peace), a leper colony, in the mid-1950s on land granted from the Indian government.
In India and beyond, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity devoted their time to the blind, the disabled, the aged, and the poor. She opened schools, orphanages and homes for the needy, and turned her attention to the victims of AIDS as that disease increased in prevalence. By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries.
Perhaps, French President Jacques Chirac summed up Mother Teresa's legacy best when he said after her death: "This evening, there is less love, less compassion, less light in the world."