Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha
Bojaxhiu, in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now
the capital of Macedonia) on August
27, 1910. Her parents were Albanians
who settled in Skopje shortly after
the beginning of the century. Her father
co-owned a construction company and
the family lived quite comfortably.
At the age of twelve, while attending
a Roman Catholic elementary school,
she records that she knew she had a
vocation to help the poor. She decided
to train for missionary work, and at
the age of eighteen she joined the Sisters
of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns
with a mission in Calcutta. After a
few months' training in Dublin she was
sent to India, where in 1928 she took
her initial vows as a nun. On
May 24, 1931, she took the name of "Teresa"
in honor of St. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century
Spanish nun.
From
1929 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at
St. Mary's High School for Girls in
Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty
she glimpsed outside the convent walls
made such a deep impression on her that
in 1946 she received permission from
her archbishop to leave the convent
school and devote herself to working
among the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
In 1948 Pope Pius XII granted Mother
Teresa permission to live as an independent
nun. That same year, she became an Indian
citizen. After studying nursing for
three months with the American Medical
Missionaries in the Indian city of Patna,
she returned to Calcutta.
Mother
Teresa began an open-air school for
homeless children. She was later joined
by voluntary helpers, and financial
support was also forthcoming from various
church organisations, as well as from
the municipal authorities. This made
it possible for her to extend the scope
of her work, and on October 7, 1950,
she received permission to start her
own order "The Missionaries of
Charity", whose primary task was
to love and care for those persons nobody
was prepared to look after. Today the
order comprises some one thousand sisters
and brothers in India, of whom a small
number are non-Indian. Many have been
trained as doctors, nurses and social
workers, and are in a position to provide
effective help for the slum population
as well as undertaking relief work in
connection with such natural catastrophes
as floods, epidemics, famine and swarms
of refugees. The order provides food
for the needy and operates hospitals,
schools, orphanages, youth centers,
and shelters for lepers and the dying
poor. It now has branches in 50 Indian
cities and 30 other countries.
In
1952 Mother Teresa began work for which
the Missionaries of Charity has been
noted ever since. She opened the "Nirmal
Hriday (Pure Heart) Home for Dying Destitutes"
in Calcutta. She and her fellow nuns
gathered dying Indians off the streets
of Calcutta and brought them to this
home to care for them during the days
before they died.
In
the mid-1950s, Mother Teresa began to
help victims of leprosy. Under Mother
Teresa's guidance, a leper colony was
established on a plot of land near the
city of Asansol, which was donated by
the Indian government. It was named
Shanti Nagar (Town of Peace). In 1965
Pope Paul VI placed the Missionaries
of Charity directly under the control
of the papacy (the office of the pope).
He also authorized Mother Teresa to
expand the order outside of India. Centers
to treat lepers, the blind, the disabled,
the aged, and the dying were soon opened
worldwide, including one in Rome in
1968.
Mother
Teresa also organized schools and orphanages
for the poor. The Brothers of Charity,
the male companion to the Sisters of
Charity, was formed in the mid-1960s
to run the homes for the dying.
In
1985, she opened the first church-sponsored
hospice for patients with AIDS in New
York City.
Mother
Teresa has fifty relief projects operating
in India: these comprise work among
slum-dwellers, children's homes, homes
for the dying, clinics and a leper colony.
The order has also spread to other countries,
and undertakes relief work for the poorest
of the poor in a number of countries
in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The
order has also established itself in
Italy, Great Britain, Ireland and the
United States.
Mother
Teresa's work has aroused considerable
attention throughout the world, and
she has received a number of awards
and distinctions:-
for her work among the people of India,
the Indian government gave her the
.....Padmashree
("Magnificent Lotus") Award
in September of 1962;
in 1971 she received the Pope John
XXIII Peace Prize;
in 1972 the Jawaharlal Nehru Award
for International Understanding;
in 1979 she received the Nobel Peace
Prize for promoting peace and
.....brotherhood
among the nations.
in 1985 she was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President
.....Ronald
Reagan.
Mother
Teresa accepted all of these awards
on behalf of the poor, using any money
that accompanied them to fund her centers.
Mother
Teresa died on September 5, 1997 in
her Missionaries of Charity home in
central Calcutta.
