Mother Teresa Sisters coming to Dundee to tackle severe poverty

Press release

A new convent of the Missionaries of Charity, known as the Mother Teresa Nuns, is to open in Dundee—the third in Scotland.

Four sisters from the order’s convent in Birmingham will arrive in Dundee on Friday May 12. Dunkeld diocesan chancellor Malcolm Veal said it was ‘wonderful news’ and the city would be blessed by their presence.

The congregation was established in 1950 by St Teresa of Calcutta, and consists of more than 4,500 religious sisters. A member of the congregation must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and the fourth vow, to give ‘wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.’

Mr Veal said that focus on the poor would guide the sisters work in Dundee.

“They’ll be based in St Anne’s Cottage, on the grounds of the diocese offices officially, while they look at the city and see where their particular charism will be best suited,” he said. “There is a real need though—if look at the Index of Multiple Deprivation for Scotland some of the areas of greatest need in the whole country are in Dundee, so they are really needed.”

He said Bishop Stephen Robson had written to the Order’s local mother superior a couple of years ago asking her to consider sending some of her sisters to Dundee.

“She came up and talked to us and went away and thought about it and decided to send some,” he said. “We’re very fortunate.”

He said that Bishop Robson would introduce the sisters to the diocese after a Mass at St Andrew’s Cathedral on May 13 to mark the centenary of the apparitions at Fatima. The establishment of a Missionaries of Charity convent in Dundee will be the Order’s third in Scotland joining those in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They are also part of a small revival of religious orders in Dundee—including the Nigerian Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ—that are an increasingly visible presence in the city.