Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu IPA: (August 26, 1910 – September 5, 1997), was an Albanian Roman Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work. For over forty years, she ministered to the needs of the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying of Calcutta (Kolkata). As her religious order grew she expanded her ministry to other countries. By the 1970s she had become internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book, Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge.



Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and designated Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. However, she and the order she founded have attracted criticism in latter years with respect to care of the sick and destination of financial contributions.

Agnes Bojaxhiu was born on 26 August, 1910, in the center of Uskub, in the Kosovo Province of the Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, Republic of Macedonia). Her parents were Albanians; her father, Nikollë, was originally from Mirëdita (North Albania) and her mother, Dranafille, came from Đakovica (Gjakovë). Raised as a Catholic by her parents, her father died when she was about eight years old. During her early years, she was fascinated with stories of missionary life and service. By the time she was twelve, Agnes was convinced that her vocation should be a religious life. She left her home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. Agnes would never again set eyes on her mother or sister.

She initially went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland in order to learn English, which was the language nuns used to instruct India's schoolchildren. Arriving in India in 1929, she began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayas.[8] She took her first vows as a nun on 24 May 1931, choosing the name Teresa after the patron saint of missionaries. She took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in eastern Calcutta.

Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. A famine in 1943 brought misery and death to the city; the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.

On September 10, 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" while travelling to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."[14] She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her long, traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border and then venturing out into the slums."[15] Initially she started a school in Motijhil; shortly thereafter, she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving.[16] Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the Prime Minister, who expressed his appreciation.