Saint Teresa of Calcutta knew that it would cost her much when she founded a religious order. Since then many other religious orders have cut corners by selling out to worldly concerns, as though politically correct forms of “environmentalism” and “peace and justice” superseded the peace of Jesus and the justice of salvation. Some even abandoned their religious habits and communal lives. This is their last generation, as they resemble geriatric institutions. In contrast, Saint Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity numbered twelve sisters in 1950. Today there are 5,161 sisters, 416 brothers and 7,598 houses ministering to the poorest of the poor and bringing them the Gospel. They counted the cost and have not labored in vain.

• Father George W. Rutler