Mother Teresa’s steely determination, total commitment and toughness were evident to those who met her and worked with her in the slums of India

When Mother Teresa died at the age of 87 on 5 September 1997, the Indian Government went all out to honour the woman who had been called “the saint of the gutters”. In an unprecedented gesture, the gun carriage that had been used only once before – to carry the body of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 – was flown to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) to carry her body along the streets prior to her burial at the Mother House.

It was a funeral that suited one of the most famous people on the planet but for the first half of her life, Mother Teresa lived in obscurity. The world only got to know her in the 1970s when the British journalist and broadcaster (and late Catholic convert) Malcolm Muggeridge discovered her and made his  documentary film, Something Beautiful for God. That “something beautiful” was serving the poorest of the poor with the order she founded, the Missionaries of Charity (MC), whose blue-striped white cotton saris became a symbol of dedication to the destitute. Today, the Missionaries have 768 houses with 5,160 nuns in 139 countries.