Three Americans who knew and worked with Mother Teresa reflect on her life and legacy.

Editor’s note: This piece was posted originally on August 29, 2016, leading up to the September 6, 2016, canonization of Mother Teresa. It is reposted here on the tenth anniversary of that event.

Pope Francis will canonize Mother Teresa (1910-1997) on Sunday, September 4. In 2015, the Vatican recognized the miraculous healing through her intercession of a Brazilian man with multiple brain abscesses, the second miracle required to declare her a saint.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje, now the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. She grew up in a devout, middle-class Catholic home. From a young age, she was taught by her mother, Drana, to have compassion for the poor. At age 18, she entered the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland and took the name “Teresa.” In 1937, she professed her final vows.

She was sent to teach in India, and while there, she received what she would later describe as a “call within a call,” which led her to found a new community, the Missionaries of Charity, in 1950. The MCs call was to serve the “poorest of the poor” in the streets of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), as well as throughout the world. Today, the community numbers 4,500 sisters, serving the poor of 125 countries, including the United States. In 1979, she received a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her efforts.

As her canonization approaches, CWR talked to three Americans who knew and worked with Mother Teresa and her sisters.

Jim Towey is president of Ave Maria University. In 1985, he became personal friends with Mother Teresa and served as her legal counsel in the United States during the last 12 years of her life. He also worked as a full-time volunteer for her community for two years, including at a home in Washington, DC for people dying from AIDS.

Jim Towey: I was working for a US senator, Mark Hatfield, and he sent me overseas to do business for him. I knew he was friends with her. I had always admired Mother and her work from afar, as she was everything I wasn’t. I wanted to meet her, but the problem was I didn’t want to be around the poor!

So I talked myself into going to Calcutta for a day and a half, and I thought I’d balance it out by going to Hawaii afterwards for five days.

I met her on August 20, 1985, the week she turned 75. I was captivated by her. She was so cheerful and alive in Christ.