Thirteen Women and an Open Door

On October 7, 1950, the Vatican officially recognized a tiny new religious order in Calcutta, India. Its founder, a 40-year-old Albanian nun named Agnes Bojaxhiu — known to the world as Mother Teresa — had spent the previous two years walking the narrow lanes of Motijhil, one of the city's most desperate slums. She had left the security of the Loreto convent, where she had taught comfortably for nearly twenty years, carrying almost nothing.…