From the July 1980 issue of LIFE
On the streets of
Calcutta. Kipling's City of Dreadful Night, hundreds of thousands of
people are born, live and die in destitution scarcely imaginable to the
western mind. They, the dispossessed, coexist with the prouder parts of
Calcutta -- elegant homes and modern office buildings -- in the squalid
interstices of a society that is otherwise lively in culture, politics and
commerce.
In 1948 a tiny nun left the landscaped confines of Calcutta's Loreto
convent for the teeming streets to devote herself to caring for the
poorest of the poor. For this zealous commitment, Mother Teresa, nearing
70, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last fall. Today Mother Teresa's
Missionaries of Charity number 158 houses all over the world, comprising
2,000 nuns as well as a brotherhood of 250 members and some 10,000 lay
volunteers.
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