mother teresa biography short

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor. Considered one of the 20th Century's greatest humanitarians, she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.

(1910-1997)

Who Was Mother Teresa?

Nun and missionary Mother Teresa, known in the Catholic church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, devoted her life to caring for the sick and poor. Born in Macedonia to parents of Albanian-descent and having taught in India for 17 years, Mother Teresa experienced her "call within a call" in 1946. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged and disabled; and a leper colony.

Mother Teresa’s Family and Young Life

Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The following day, she was baptized as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

Mother Teresa’s parents, Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, were of Albanian descent; her father was an entrepreneur who worked as a construction contractor and a trader of medicines and other goods. The Bojaxhius were a devoutly Catholic family, and Nikola was deeply involved in the local church as well as in city politics as a vocal proponent of Albanian independence.

In 1919, when Mother Teresa — then Agnes — was only eight years old, her father suddenly fell ill and died. While the cause of his death remains unknown, many have speculated that political enemies poisoned him.

In the aftermath of her father's death, Agnes became extraordinarily close to her mother, a pious and compassionate woman who instilled in her daughter a deep commitment to charity. Although by no means wealthy, Drana Bojaxhiu extended an open invitation to the city's destitute to dine with her family. "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," she counseled her daughter. When Agnes asked who the people eating with them were, her mother uniformly responded, "Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people."

Education and Nunhood

Agnes attended a convent-run primary school and then a state-run secondary school. As a girl, she sang in the local Sacred Heart choir and was often asked to sing solos. The congregation made an annual pilgrimage to the Church of the Black Madonna in Letnice, and it was on one such trip at the age of 12 that she first felt a calling to religious life. Six years later, in 1928, an 18-year-old Agnes Bojaxhiu decided to become a nun and set off for Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin. It was there that she took the name Sister Mary Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

A year later, Sister Mary Teresa traveled on to Darjeeling, India, for the novitiate period; in May 1931, she made her First Profession of Vows. Afterward, she was sent to Calcutta, where she was assigned to teach at Saint Mary's High School for Girls, a school run by the Loreto Sisters and dedicated to teaching girls from the city's poorest Bengali families. Sister Teresa learned to speak both Bengali and Hindi fluently as she taught geography and history and dedicated herself to alleviating the girls' poverty through education.

On May 24, 1937, she took her Final Profession of Vows to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. As was the custom for Loreto nuns, she took on the title of "Mother" upon making her final vows and thus became known as Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa continued to teach at Saint Mary's, and in 1944 she became the school's principal. Through her kindness, generosity and unfailing commitment to her students' education, she sought to lead them to a life of devotion to Christ. "Give me the strength to be ever the light of their lives, so that I may lead them at last to you," she wrote in prayer.

'Call Within a Call'

On September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa experienced a second calling, the "call within a call" that would forever transform her life. She was riding in a train from Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills for a retreat when she said Christ spoke to her and told her to abandon teaching to work in the slums of Calcutta aiding the city's poorest and sickest people.

Since Mother Teresa had taken a vow of obedience, she could not leave her convent without official permission. After nearly a year and a half of lobbying, in January 1948 she finally received approval to pursue this new calling. That August, donning the blue-and-white sari that she would wear in public for the rest of her life, she left the Loreto convent and wandered out into the city. After six months of basic medical training, she voyaged for the first time into Calcutta's slums with no more specific a goal than to aid "the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for."

Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa quickly translated her calling into concrete actions to help the city's poor. She began an open-air school and established a home for the dying destitute in a dilapidated building she convinced the city government to donate to her cause. In October 1950, she won canonical recognition for a new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only a handful of members—most of them former teachers or pupils from St. Mary's School.

As the ranks of her congregation swelled and donations poured in from around India and across the globe, the scope of Mother Teresa's charitable activities expanded exponentially. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, she established a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics.

In 1971, Mother Teresa traveled to New York City to open her first American-based house of charity, and in the summer of 1982, she secretly went to Beirut, Lebanon, where she crossed between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut to aid children of both faiths. In 1985, Mother Teresa returned to New York and spoke at the 40th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly. While there, she also opened Gift of Love, a home to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS.

Mother Teresa’s Awards and Recognition

In February 1965, Pope Paul VI bestowed the Decree of Praise upon the Missionaries of Charity, which prompted Mother Teresa to begin expanding internationally. By the time of her death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered more than 4,000 — in addition to thousands more lay volunteers — with 610 foundations in 123 countries around the world.

The Decree of Praise was just the beginning, as Mother Teresa received various honors for her tireless and effective charity. She was awarded the Jewel of India, the highest honor bestowed on Indian civilians, as well as the now-defunct Soviet Union's Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work "in bringing help to suffering humanity."

Criticism of Mother Teresa

Despite this widespread praise, Mother Teresa's life and work have not gone without its controversies. In particular, she has drawn criticism for her vocal endorsement of some of the Catholic Church's more controversial doctrines, such as opposition to contraception and abortion. "I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion," Mother Teresa said in her 1979 Nobel lecture.

In 1995, she publicly advocated a "no" vote in the Irish referendum to end the country's constitutional ban on divorce and remarriage. The most scathing criticism of Mother Teresa can be found in Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice , in which Hitchens argued that Mother Teresa glorified poverty for her own ends and provided a justification for the preservation of institutions and beliefs that sustained widespread poverty.

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When and How Mother Teresa Died

After several years of deteriorating health, including heart, lung and kidney problems, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87.

Mother Teresa’s Letters

In 2003, the publication of Mother Teresa’s private correspondence caused a wholesale re-evaluation of her life by revealing the crisis of faith she suffered for most of the last 50 years of her life.

In one despairing letter to a confidant, she wrote, "Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony." While such revelations are shocking considering her public image, they have also made Mother Teresa a more relatable and human figure to all those who experience doubt in their beliefs.

Mother Teresa’s Miracles and Canonization

In 2002, the Vatican recognized a miracle involving an Indian woman named Monica Besra, who said she was cured of an abdominal tumor through Mother Teresa's intercession on the one-year anniversary of her death in 1998. She was beatified (declared in heaven) as "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta" on October 19, 2003, by Pope John Paul II .

On December 17, 2015, Pope Francis issued a decree that recognized a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, clearing the way for her to be canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. The second miracle involved the healing of Marcilio Andrino, a Brazilian man who was diagnosed with a viral brain infection and lapsed into a coma. His wife, family and friends prayed to Mother Teresa, and when the man was brought to the operating room for emergency surgery, he woke up without pain and was cured of his symptoms, according to a statement from the Missionaries of Charity Father.

Mother Teresa was canonized as a saint on September 4, 2016, a day before the 19th anniversary of her death. Pope Francis led the canonization mass, which was held in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. Tens of thousands of Catholics and pilgrims from around the world attended the canonization to celebrate the woman who had been called “the saint of the gutters” during her lifetime because of her charitable work with the poor.

“After due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint, and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole church,” Pope Francis said in Latin.

The Pope spoke about Mother Teresa’s life of service in the homily. ”Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded," he said. "She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity. She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created."

He also told the faithful to follow her example and practice compassion. “Mercy was the salt which gave flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering,” he said, adding. "May she be your model of holiness."

Since her death, Mother Teresa has remained in the public spotlight. For her unwavering commitment to aiding those most in need, Mother Teresa stands out as one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. She combined profound empathy and a fervent commitment to her cause with incredible organizational and managerial skills that allowed her to develop a vast and effective international organization of missionaries to help impoverished citizens all across the globe.

Despite the enormous scale of her charitable activities and the millions of lives she touched, to her dying day, she held only the most humble conception of her own achievements. Summing up her life in characteristically self-effacing fashion, Mother Teresa said, "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."

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QUICK FACTS

• Name: Teresa
• Birth Year: 1910
• Birth date: August 26, 1910
• Birth City: Skopje
• Birth Country: Macedonia
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Mother Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor. Considered one of the 20th Century's greatest humanitarians, she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.
• Christianity
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary
• Nacionalities
• Macedonian (Macedonia)
• Albanian (Albania)
• Interesting Facts
• On religious pilgrimage at the age of 12, Mother Teresa experienced her calling to devote her life to Christ.
• Through her own letters, Mother Teresa expressed doubt and wrestled with her faith.
• Mother Teresa was canonized after the Vatican verified two people's claims of having experienced miracles through her.
• Death Year: 1997
• Death date: September 5, 1997
• Death City: Calcutta
• Death Country: India

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Mother Teresa Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/religious-figures/mother-teresa
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: February 24, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
• God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.
• Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet, especially your family.
• Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart.
• Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing.
• If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.
• Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.
• Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.
• Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other and in the home begins the disruption of peace in the world.
• There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives-the pain the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them.
• Like Jesus, we belong to the world not living for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength.

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Mother Teresa

By: History.com Editors

Published: February 26, 2024

Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun and founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, an organization that serves the poorest of the world’s population. An ethnic Albanian, born in what is now Macedonia, she lived and worked in India for nearly seven decades and became a citizen of that country. Her dedication to helping the poorest and sickest communities in Kolkata (then Calcutta) earned Mother Teresa widespread fame and numerous honors, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

Childhood and Move to India

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in what is now Skopje, North Macedonia; at the time it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Her family was of Albanian descent; her father, a reasonably successful merchant, died when she was just eight years old. After his death, the family struggled financially, but her mother instilled in young Agnes the importance of leading a Christian life and serving the less fortunate.

At the age of 12, Agnes first felt a calling to become a nun and devote her life to God. She left home at the age of 18 and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish Catholic order with missions in India. She received training near Dublin, where she began learning English, before traveling to Kolkata (then known as Calcutta), India in late 1928. She took her first vows as a nun in May 1931, and received a new name: Teresa, after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. In 1937, when she took her final vows, she became known as Mother Teresa.

'Call Within a Call'

From 1931 to 1948, Mother Teresa taught geography, history and catechism at St. Mary’s High School in Kolkata. She learned Bengali and Hindi, and eventually became the school’s principal. She also regularly visited the city’s slums and saw how suffering increased there during the devastating famine in 1943, which killed hundreds of thousands of people in India’s Bengal province.

In September 1946, Mother Teresa experienced what she described as a “call within a call” while riding on a train within India. In response, she sought and received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and live and work in the slums among the city’s sickest and poorest residents. With this move, Mother Teresa began wearing what would become her trademark garb: a white sari with a blue border, later adopted as the habit for the other nuns who worked alongside her.

The Order of the Missionaries of Charity 

In 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to found her own order, the Missionaries of Charity. The order’s purpose was to help the poor while living among them, sharing their experience and treating them with kindness, compassion and empathy, but never pity. Mother Teresa and those who joined her order built various facilities as an open-air school, housing for orphan children, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for terminally ill patients.

Mother Teresa’s order expanded over the years to serve communities outside Kolkata, and in 1965, received permission from Pope Paul VI to expand internationally. It opened its first center in the United States in 1971 in New York City, and would eventually reach around 90 countries.

As her work earned her international renown, Mother Teresa was awarded honors including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). In 1975, she was featured on the cover of TIME magazine and called one of the world’s “living saints.”

Nobel Peace Prize and Criticism

In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee cited as her “work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress in the world, which also constitute a threat to peace.” By that time, the Missionaries of Charity included more than 1,800 nuns and 120,000 lay workers, working in more than 80 centers in India and more than 100 other centers internationally. The following year, the Indian government awarded Mother Teresa the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honor.

Despite her numerous honors and widespread fame and admiration, Mother Teresa became a target of criticism as well. She held hard-line conservative views against divorce, contraception and abortion , as well as highly traditional views about the role of women in society. Some critics cast doubt on the level of hygiene and care at some of her order’s facilities; others accused her of trying to convert the people she served to Christianity.

Declining Health, Death and Sainthood 

After suffering a heart attack in 1989, Mother Teresa attempted to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity but was returned to that office by a nearly unanimous vote; hers was the only dissent. In 1997, her worsening health forced her permanent retirement, and the order chose an Indian-born nun, Sister Nirmala, to replace her. Mother Teresa suffered cardiac arrest and died on September 5, 1997, in Kolkata, just days after her 87th birthday.

As the world mourned Mother Teresa’s death, Pope John Paul II issued a special dispensation to speed the process of her canonization, or becoming a saint. In 2003, he beatified Mother Teresa after an Indian woman attributed her recovery from stomach cancer to Mother Teresa’s intercession, which the Vatican recognized as a miracle.

Twelve years later, the Holy See recognized a second miracle, after a Brazilian man recovered from a life-threatening brain infection after his family prayed to Mother Teresa. In September 2016, Pope Francis I officially declared Mother Teresa a saint 19 years after her death—a markedly fast pace for modern times.

“She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created,” the Pope said in the canonization ceremony, held in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City .

Mother Teresa - Biographical. The Nobel Prize .

Eric Pace, “Mother Teresa, Hope of the Despairing, Dies at 87.” The New York Times , September 6, 1997.

Kathryn Spink. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography , (Harper Collins, 1997).

Elisabetta Povoledo, “Mother Teresa Is Made a Saint by Pope Francis.” The New York Times , September 3, 2016.

Mallika Kapur and Sugam Pokharel, “‘Troubled individual:’ Mother Teresa no saint to her critics.” CNN , September 4, 2016.

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Biography of Mother Teresa, 'The Saint of the Gutters'

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Mother Teresa (August 26, 1910–September 5, 1997) founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order of nuns dedicated to helping the poor. Begun in Calcutta, India, the Missionaries of Charity grew to help the poor, dying, orphans, lepers, and AIDS sufferers in more than 100 countries. Mother Teresa's selfless effort to help those in need has caused many to regard her as a model humanitarian. She was canonized a saint in 2016.

• Known for : Founding the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order of nuns dedicated to helping the poor
• Also known as : Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (birth name), "The Saint of the Gutters"
• Born : Aug. 26, 1910 in Üsküp, Kosovo Vilayet,  Ottoman Empire
• Parents : Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu
• Died : September 5, 1997 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India
• Honors : Canonized (pronounced a saint) in September 2016
• Notable quote : "We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something."

Early Years

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa, was the third and final child born to her Albanian Catholic parents, Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, in the city of Skopje (a predominantly Muslim city in the Balkans). Nikola was a self-made, successful businessman and Dranafile stayed home to take care of the children.

When Mother Teresa was about 8 years old, her father died unexpectedly. The Bojaxhiu family was devastated. After a period of intense grief, Dranafile, suddenly a single mother of three children, sold textiles and hand-made embroidery to bring in some income.

Both before Nikola's death and especially after it, the Bojaxhiu family held tightly to their religious beliefs. The family prayed daily and went on pilgrimages annually.

When Mother Teresa was 12 years old, she began to feel called to serve God as a nun. Deciding to become a nun was a very difficult decision. Becoming a nun not only meant giving up the chance to marry and have children, but it also meant giving up all her worldly possessions and her family, perhaps forever.

For five years, Mother Teresa thought hard about whether or not to become a nun. During this time, she sang in the church choir, helped her mother organize church events, and went on walks with her mother to hand out food and supplies to the poor.

When Mother Teresa was 17, she decided to become a nun. Having read many articles about the work Catholic missionaries were doing in India, Mother Teresa was determined to go there. Mother Teresa applied to the Loreto order of nuns, based in Ireland but with missions in India.

In September 1928, 18-year-old Mother Teresa said goodbye to her family to travel to Ireland and then on to India. She never saw her mother or sister again.

Becoming a Nun

It took more than two years to become a Loreto nun. After spending six weeks in Ireland learning the history of the Loreto order and to study English, Mother Teresa then traveled to India, where she arrived on Jan. 6, 1929.

After two years as a novice, Mother Teresa took her first vows as a Loreto nun on May 24, 1931.

As a new Loreto nun, Mother Teresa (known then only as Sister Teresa, a name she chose after St. Teresa of Lisieux) settled into the Loreto Entally convent in Kolkata (previously called Calcutta ) and began teaching history and geography at the convent schools.

Usually, Loreto nuns were not allowed to leave the convent; however, in 1935, 25-year-old Mother Teresa was given a special exemption to teach at a school outside of the convent, St. Teresa's. After two years at St. Teresa's, Mother Teresa took her final vows on May 24, 1937, and officially became "Mother Teresa."

Almost immediately after taking her final vows, Mother Teresa became the principal of St. Mary's, one of the convent schools, and was once again restricted to staying within the convent's walls.

'A Call Within a Call'

For nine years, Mother Teresa continued as the principal of St. Mary's. Then on Sept. 10, 1946, a day now annually celebrated as "Inspiration Day," Mother Teresa received what she described as a "call within a call."

She had been traveling on a train to Darjeeling when she received an "inspiration," a message that told her to leave the convent and help the poor by living among them.

For two years, Mother Teresa patiently petitioned her superiors for permission to leave the convent to follow her call. It was a long and frustrating process.

To her superiors, it seemed dangerous and futile to send a single woman out into the slums of Kolkata. However, in the end, Mother Teresa was granted permission to leave the convent for one year to help the poorest of the poor.

In preparation for leaving the convent, Mother Teresa purchased three cheap, white, cotton saris, each one lined with three blue stripes along its edge. (This later became the uniform for the nuns at Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.)

After 20 years with the Loreto order, Mother Teresa left the convent on Aug. 16, 1948.

Rather than going directly to the slums, Mother Teresa first spent several weeks in Patna with the Medical Mission Sisters to obtain some basic medical knowledge. Having learned the basics, 38-year-old Mother Teresa felt ready to venture out into the slums of Calcutta, India in December 1948.

Founding the Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa started with what she knew. After walking around the slums for a while, she found some small children and began to teach them. She had no classroom, no desks, no chalkboard, and no paper, so she picked up a stick and began drawing letters in the dirt. Class had begun.

Soon after, Mother Teresa found a small hut that she rented and turned it into a classroom. Mother Teresa also visited the children's families and others in the area, offering a smile and limited medical help. As people began to hear about her work, they gave donations.

In March 1949, Mother Teresa was joined by her first helper, a former pupil from Loreto. Soon she had 10 former pupils helping her.

At the end of Mother Teresa's provisionary year, she petitioned to form her order of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity. Her request was granted by Pope Pius XII; the Missionaries of Charity was established on Oct. 7, 1950.

Helping the Sick, Dying, Orphaned, and Lepers

There were millions of people in need in India. Droughts, the caste system , India's independence, and partition all contributed to the masses of people that lived on the streets. India's government was trying, but they could not handle the overwhelming multitudes that needed help.

While the hospitals were overflowing with patients that had a chance to survive, Mother Teresa opened a home for the dying, called Nirmal Hriday ("Place of the Immaculate Heart"), on Aug. 22, 1952.

Each day, nuns would walk through the streets and bring people who were dying to Nirmal Hriday, located in a building donated by the city of Kolkata. The nuns would bathe and feed these people and then place them in a cot. They were given the opportunity to die with dignity, with the rituals of their faith.

In 1955, the Missionaries of Charity opened their first children's home (Shishu Bhavan), which cared for orphans. These children were housed and fed and given medical aid. When possible, the children were adopted out. Those not adopted were given an education, learned a trade skill, and found marriages.

In India's slums, huge numbers of people were infected with leprosy, a disease that can lead to major disfiguration. At the time, lepers (people infected with leprosy) were ostracized, often abandoned by their families. Because of the widespread fear of lepers, Mother Teresa struggled to find a way to help these neglected people.

Mother Teresa eventually created a Leprosy Fund and a Leprosy Day to help educate the public about the disease and established a number of mobile leper clinics (the first opened in September 1957) to provide lepers with medicine and bandages near their homes.

By the mid-1960s, Mother Teresa had established a leper colony called Shanti Nagar ("The Place of Peace") where lepers could live and work.

International Recognition

Just before the Missionaries of Charity celebrated its 10th anniversary, they were given permission to establish houses outside of Calcutta, but still within India. Almost immediately, houses were established in Delhi, Ranchi, and Jhansi; more soon followed.

For their 15th anniversary, the Missionaries of Charity was given permission to establish houses outside of India. The first house was established in Venezuela in 1965. Soon there were Missionaries of Charity houses all around the world.

As Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity expanded at an amazing rate, so did international recognition for her work. Although Mother Teresa was awarded numerous honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she never took personal credit for her accomplishments. She said it was God's work and that she was just the tool used to facilitate it.

Controversy

With international recognition also came critique. Some people complained that the houses for the sick and dying were not sanitary, that those treating the sick were not properly trained in medicine, that Mother Teresa was more interested in helping the dying go to God than in potentially helping cure them. Others claimed that she helped people so that she could convert them to Christianity.

Mother Teresa also caused much controversy when she openly spoke against abortion and birth control. Others critiqued her because they believed that with her new celebrity status, she could have worked to end the poverty rather than soften its symptoms.

Later Years and Death

Despite the controversy, Mother Teresa continued to be an advocate for those in need. In the 1980s, Mother Teresa, already in her 70s, opened Gift of Love homes in New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for AIDS sufferers.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Mother Teresa's health deteriorated, but she still traveled the world, spreading her message.

When Mother Teresa, age 87, died of heart failure on Sept. 5, 1997 (just five days after Princess Diana 's death), the world mourned her passing. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to see her body, while millions more watched her state funeral on television.

After the funeral, Mother Teresa's body was laid to rest at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata. When Mother Teresa passed away, she left behind more than 4,000 Missionary of Charity Sisters at 610 centers in 123 countries.

Legacy: Becoming a Saint

After Mother Teresa's death, the Vatican began the lengthy process of canonization. After an Indian woman was cured of her tumor after praying to Mother Teresa, a miracle was declared, and the third of the four steps to sainthood was completed on Oct. 19, 2003, when the Pope approved Mother Teresa's beatification, awarding Mother Teresa the title "Blessed."​

The final stage required to become a saint involves a second miracle. On December 17, 2015, Pope Francis recognized the medically inexplicable waking (and healing) of an extremely ill Brazilian man from a coma on December 9, 2008, just minutes before he was to undergo emergency brain surgery as being caused by the intervention of Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa was canonized (pronounced a saint) on September 4, 2016.

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Biography Online

Facts about Mother Teresa

“Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love….The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.” – Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007)

•  Mother Teresa (1910–1997) was a Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor and destitute around the world.
• She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on 26 August 1910.
• In Albanian Gonxhe means “rosebud” or “little flower”.
• She considered 27 August to be her real birthday as it was the day she was baptized.

Memorial house of Mother Teresa in Macedonia.

• She was born in the town Uskup (now Skopje). Her family were Kosovan-Albanians. In 1910 Skopje was part of the Ottoman Empire. It is now in the Republic of Macedonia.
• Her mother was known for her charity to the poor, often inviting the poor to share food with the family. As she counselled her daughter. “My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others,’

• In 1929, she travelled to India, where she learnt Bengali. She arrived with the equivalent of 5 Rupees.
• Mother Teresa learned and spoke five languages fluently. She spoke English, Albanian, Serbo-Croat, Bengali, and Hindi
• In 1931 she made the decision to be a nun. She chose the name Teresa to honour St Therese of Lisieux and St Teresa of Avila .
• She taught History and Geography at St Mary’s High School in Kolkata for 15 years and became its headmistress. Many of first to join her in her missionary work were former students.
• Distressed by the sight of poverty and suffering, in 1946, she felt an inner call to serve the poor.

“I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor.” – Mother Teresa.

• Mother Teresa gave up her traditional nun habit and adopted an Indian Sari – white with a blue edge.

• In Calcutta, Mother Teresa began an open-air school and established a home for the destitute. She persuaded the local city government to donate a dilapidated building she could use.
• Over the next two decades, she established a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics
• In 1971, she opened her first house of charity in the west – in New York, US.
• Mother Teresa often commented that the spiritual poverty of the west was harder to remove than the material poverty of the east.

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” – Mother Teresa (1989)

• She eventually suffered a heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically fitted to her chest. Even after this devastating blow to her health, she continued her work for another eight years.
• In 1958, the trademark white and blue saris were specially made in Titagarh by the Gandhiji Prem Niwas for leprosy patients.
• In 1950 Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity. A religious order within the Roman Catholic church. It has over 4,000 nuns who take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service to the poor.  Its mission statement was to serve.

“The hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”

• The life and work of Mother Teresa were brought to the wider attention of the world through a film (1969) and a book (1972), Something Beautiful for God , by Malcolm Muggeridge.
• Teresa did not seek to convert those she encountered to Catholicism. She wished to bring people closer to God, however they understood God.

“‘Yes, I convert. I convert you to be a better Hindu, or a better Muslim, or a better Protestant, or a better Catholic, or a better Parsee, or a better Sikh, or a better Buddhist. And after you have found God, it is for you to do what God wants you to do.”

• Teresa saw herself as a spokesperson for the Vatican; she upheld the conservative teachings of the Catholic church on contraception, abortion and opposition to the death penalty.
• Despite her apparent faith in dedicating her life to the poor, she also experienced periods of spiritual dryness.

“Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain.” Mother Teresa ‘ Come be my Light ‘

Prizes and honours

• In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• She turned down the Nobel honour banquet and requested the $192,000  prize money to be used to help the poor in India.
• After receiving the prize, she was asked: “What can we do to promote world peace?” Mother Teresa answered, “Go home and love your family.”
• In 1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded her the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• In 1972 she was awarded the Indian ‘Nehru Prize’ –“for the promotion of international peace and understanding”.

Mother Teresa holding Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run. October 1st 1994. Church of San Gregorio in Rome, Italy

• Mother Teresa, died of heart failure on September 5, 1997 age 87 – just five days after Princess Diana. Whom she had recently met.
• In 2016, Mother Teresa was declared a saint by Pope Francis.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Facts about Mother Teresa ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 18th Jan 2019.

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Mother Teresa Biography

Born: August 27, 1910 Skopje, Macedonia Died: September 5, 1997 Calcutta, India Albanian nun

Mother Teresa's devotional work among the poor and dying of India won her the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979. She is also known as the founder of the only Catholic religious order still growing in membership.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. At the time of her birth Skopje was located within the Ottoman Empire, a vast empire controlled by the Turks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Agnes was the last of three children born to Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, Albanian grocers. When Agnes was nine years old, her happy, comfortable, close-knit family life was upset when her father died. She attended public school in Skopje, and first showed religious interests as a member of a school society that focused on foreign missions (groups that travel to foreign countries to spread their religious beliefs). By the age of twelve she felt she had a calling to help the poor.

This calling took sharper focus through Mother Teresa's teenage years, when she was especially inspired by reports of work being done in India by Yugoslav Jesuit missionaries serving in Bengal, India. When she was eighteen, Mother Teresa left home to join a community of Irish nuns, the Sisters of Loretto, who had a mission in Calcutta, India. She received training in Dublin, Ireland, and in Darjeeling, India, taking her first religious vows in 1928 and her final religious vows in 1937.

One of Mother Teresa's first assignments was to teach, and eventually to serve as principal, in a girls' high school in Calcutta. Although the school was close to the slums (terribly poor sections), the students were mainly wealthy. In 1946 Mother Teresa experienced what she called a second vocation or "call within a call." She felt an inner urging to leave the convent life (life of a nun) and work directly with the poor. In 1948 the Vatican (residence of the pope in Vatican City, Italy) gave her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and to start a new work under the guidance of the Archbishop of Calcutta.

Founding the Missionaries of Charity

To prepare to work with the poor, Mother Teresa took an intensive medical training with the American Medical Missionary Sisters in Patna, India. Her first venture in Calcutta was to gather unschooled children from the slums and start to teach them. She quickly attracted both financial support and volunteers. In 1950 her group, now called the Missionaries of Charity, received official status as a religious community within the Archdiocese of Calcutta. Members took the traditional vows of poverty, chastity (purity), and obedience, but they added a fourth vow—to give free service to the most poor.

The Missionaries of Charity received considerable publicity, and Mother Teresa used it to benefit her work. In 1957 they began to work with lepers (those suffering from leprosy, a terrible infectious disease) and slowly expanded their educational work, at one point running nine elementary schools in Calcutta. They also opened a home for orphans and abandoned children. Before long they had a presence in more than twenty-two Indian cities. Mother Teresa also visited other countries such as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Australia, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Italy to begin new foundations.

Dedication to the very poor

Mother Teresa's group continued to expand throughout the 1970s, opening new missions in places such as Amman, Jordan; London, England; and New York, New York. She received both recognition and financial support through such awards as the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize and a grant from the Joseph Kennedy Jr. Foundation. Benefactors, or those donating money, regularly would arrive to support works in progress or to encourage the Sisters to open new ventures.

By 1979 Mother Teresa's groups had more than two hundred different operations in over twenty-five countries around the world, with dozens more ventures on the horizon. The same year she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1986 she persuaded President Fidel Castro (1926–) to allow a mission in Cuba. The characteristics of all of Mother Teresa's works—shelters for the dying, orphanages, and homes for the mentally ill—continued to be of service to the very poor.

In 1988 Mother Teresa sent her Missionaries of Charity into Russia and opened a home for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS; an incurable disease that weakens the immune system) patients in San Francisco, California. In 1991 she returned home to Albania and opened a home in Tirana, the capital. At this time there were 168 homes operating in India.

Saint Teresa

Despite the appeal of this saintly work, all commentators remarked that Mother Teresa herself was the most important reason for the growth of her order and the fame that came to it. Unlike many "social critics," she did not find it necessary to attack the economic or political structures of the cultures that were producing the terribly poor people she was serving. For her, the primary rule was a constant love, and when social critics or religious reformers (improvers) chose to demonstrate anger at the evils of structures underlying poverty and suffering, that was between them and God.

In the 1980s and 1990s Mother Teresa's health problems became a concern. She suffered a heart attack while visiting Pope John Paul II (1920–) in 1983. She had a near fatal heart attack in 1989 and began wearing a pacemaker, a device that regulates the heartbeat.

In March 1997, after an eight week selection process, sixty-three-year-old Sister Nirmala was named as the new leader of the Missionaries of Charity. Although Mother Teresa had been trying to cut back on her duties for some time because of her health, she stayed on in an advisory role to Sister Nirmala.

Mother Teresa celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday in August, and died shortly thereafter of a heart attack on September 5, 1997. The world grieved her loss and one mourner noted, "It was Mother herself who poor people respected. When they bury her, we will have lost something that cannot be replaced."

Legacy of Mother Teresa

In appearance Mother Teresa was both tiny and energetic. Her face was quite wrinkled, but her dark eyes commanded attention, radiating an energy and intelligence that shone without expressing nervousness or impatience. Conservatives within the Catholic Church sometimes used her as a symbol of traditional religious values that they felt were lacking in their churches. By most accounts she was a saint for the times, and several almost adoring books and articles started to canonize (declare a saint) her in the 1980s and well into the 1990s. She herself tried to deflect all attention away from what she did to either the works of her group or to the God who was her inspiration.

The Missionaries of Charity, who had brothers as well as sisters by the mid-1980s, are guided by the constitution Mother Teresa wrote for them. They have their vivid memo ries of the love for the poor that created the phenomenon of Mother Teresa in the first place. The final part of her story will be the lasting impact her memory has on the next generations of missionaries, as well as on the world as a whole.

For More Information

Egan, Eileen. Such a Vision of the Street. Gar den City, NY: Doubleday, 1985.

Le Joly, Edward. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1983.

Mother Teresa. In My Own Words. Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1996.

Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something Beautiful for God. New York: Walker and Company, 1984.

Spink, Kathryn. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1997.

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The New York Times

Europe | mother teresa: the life of a saint.

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Mother Teresa: The Life of a Saint

By THE NEW YORK TIMES SEPT. 1, 2016

On her path to sainthood, Mother Teresa was a nun, a nurse and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Mother Teresa is born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.

Joins the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. There she learns English and is sent to the order’s girls’ school in Darjeeling, India, where she becomes a teacher, then principal.

After leaving the school, she learns nursing skills from other nuns, and begins her work with Kolkata’s poor.

Wins church recognition for a new order, the Missionaries of Charity, and becomes its superior general.

Wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her work among the poor. Told of the honor, she says, “I am unworthy.” Her order has grown to 1,800 nuns and 120,000 lay workers, running nearly 200 centers and homes.

From the Archive: Mother Teresa of Calcutta Wins Peace Prize

Visits a Missionaries of Charity house in the Bronx. The order opened its first house in the United States in Harlem in 1971, but soon moved to the Bronx.

From the Archive: Mother Teresa Visits Poor in Bronx

Travels to Beirut, rescuing dozens of developmentally disabled children from the fighting there.

From the Archive: Hospital Is Visited by Mother Teresa

Suffering from heart problems, Mother Teresa tells Pope John Paul II she will resign as head of her order to make way for younger hands. But the order cannot agree on a successor, and she stays on.

In failing health, she steps aside and is replaced by Sister Nirmala.

Dies in Kolkata of heart failure. She was 87.

From the Archive: Mother Teresa, Hope of the Despairing, Dies at 87

Pope John Paul II beatifies Mother Theresa, the first step toward sainthood.

From the Archive: Before Throngs, Pope Leads Mother Teresa Closer to Sainthood

More on NYTimes.com

• Mother Teresa: The Nobel Peace Prize Winner - A Detailed Biography of Her Lifelong Mission

Mother Teresa: The Nobel Peace Prize Winner – A Detailed Biography of Her Lifelong Mission

Welcome to this beginners guide where we explore the fascinating life story of one of the most iconic and beloved figures in the history of humanity – Mother Teresa . Her unwavering dedication to humanitarian work and compassion for the less fortunate have left an indelible mark on the world. In this blog post, we will delve into her biography, from her early life and upbringing to her remarkable humanitarian work and the enduring legacy she left behind.

Biography Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Life Story:

Born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, Mother Teresa’s life journey was nothing short of extraordinMother Teresa life story, Biography of Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa early life, Mother Teresa humanitarian work, Mother Teresa legacy and impact ary. Raised in a devout Catholic family, she was originally named Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. Early on, she felt a strong calling to dedicate her life to serving others and caring for the impoverished and suffering.

Biography of Mother Teresa:

Mother Teresa’s journey took a significant turn when she decided to leave her home at the tender age of 18 and join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Taking her first religious vows, she adopted the name Sister Mary Teresa, setting the foundation for her life’s mission. With unwavering dedication and perseverance, she obtained permission to travel to India to serve as a teacher and later as the headmistress of a school in Kolkata.

Mother Teresa Early Life:

During her early days in India, Mother Teresa was deeply moved by the destitute conditions of the poor and sick in the slums of Kolkata. This experience ignited a passion within her, leading her to establish the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. With a handful of dedicated followers, she began her tireless work, providing love, care, and support to the most vulnerable members of society.

Mother Teresa Humanitarian Work:

The Missionaries of Charity grew rapidly, reaching out to the needy in various parts of the world. Mother Teresa’s selfless service extended to providing food, shelter, and medical care to those affected by poverty, disease, and social exclusion. Her organization expanded to include orphanages, schools, and homes for the dying, where the terminally ill received love and dignity in their final days.

Mother Teresa Legacy and Impact:

Mother Teresa’s work garnered international recognition and accolades, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Her legacy of compassion, love, and service inspired countless individuals to follow in her footsteps and contribute to the well-being of others.

Conclusion:

Mother Teresa’s life story is an awe-inspiring tale of devotion, empathy, and selflessness. From her humble beginnings to becoming a global symbol of compassion, she has shown us the power of one individual’s determination to make the world a better place. By exploring her biography and the profound impact of her humanitarian work, we can all find inspiration to live a life of purpose and service to others.

In closing, let us remember the keywords that guided us through this journey: Mother Teresa life story, Biography of Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa early life, Mother Teresa humanitarian work, and Mother Teresa legacy and impact. May we carry her spirit in our hearts and strive to bring positive change to the lives of those around us, just as she did throughout her extraordinary life.

Question: When and where was Mother Teresa born?

Answer: Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, which is now part of North Macedonia.

Question: What led Mother Teresa to become a nun and start her humanitarian work?

Answer: Mother Teresa felt a strong calling from a young age to serve others and care for the impoverished and suffering. She joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland at the age of 18 and later obtained permission to travel to India, where she dedicated her life to humanitarian work.

Question: What is Mother Teresa’s real name, and why did she change it?

Answer: Mother Teresa’s real name was Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. When she joined the Sisters of Loreto, she adopted the name Sister Mary Teresa to signify her religious vows.

Question: What did Mother Teresa do to help the poor and sick in Kolkata?

Answer: Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950, where she and her dedicated followers provided food, shelter, and medical care to the poor and sick in Kolkata’s slums. Her organization expanded to include orphanages, schools, and homes for the dying.

Question: How did Mother Teresa’s work gain international recognition?

Answer: Mother Teresa’s relentless dedication to her humanitarian work and the impact of the Missionaries of Charity garnered international attention. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her efforts in alleviating human suffering.

Question: What were some of Mother Teresa’s major accomplishments?

Answer: Mother Teresa’s major accomplishments include founding the Missionaries of Charity, expanding her organization globally, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, and inspiring countless individuals to engage in charitable work.

Question: Where did Mother Teresa’s humanitarian work extend beyond Kolkata?

Answer: Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity expanded their operations to several countries around the world, including places in Africa, Europe, and North and South America.

Question: What is the lasting legacy of Mother Teresa’s work?

Answer: Mother Teresa’s legacy is marked by her unwavering compassion, love, and service to humanity. Her influence continues to inspire individuals and organizations worldwide to engage in acts of kindness and charity.

Question: How did Mother Teresa’s upbringing influence her dedication to serving others?

Answer: Mother Teresa’s Catholic upbringing instilled in her a strong sense of faith and compassion, which motivated her to devote her life to helping those in need.

Question: Is Mother Teresa considered a saint, and what is the process for sainthood?

Answer: Yes, Mother Teresa was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta on September 4, 2016. The process of sainthood involves a thorough investigation of the individual’s life, the recognition of miracles attributed to their intercession, and the declaration of their sainthood by the Catholic Church.

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Mother Teresa

• Occupation: Catholic Nun
• Born: August 26, 1910 in Uskub, Ottoman Empire
• Died: September 5, 1997 in Calcutta, India
• Best known for: Fighting for the rights of the sick and helpless
• Mother Teresa has been beatified by the Catholic Church. This is a step on the way to becoming a Saint. She is now called Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.
• She never saw her mother or sister again after leaving home to become a missionary.
• Albania's international airport is named after her, the Aeroporti Nene Tereza.
• She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Rather than have the traditional Nobel honor banquet, she asked that the money for the banquet be donated to the poor of India.
• She once traveled through a war zone to rescue 37 children from the front lines.
• She received numerous awards for all her charity work including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan .
• It takes around 9 years of service to become a full member of the Missionaries of Charity.
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• Mother Teresa Biography

Mother Teresa, also known as St. Teresa of Calcutta, was born in Skopje in the Ottoman Empire (located in modern-day North Macedonia). She left home at the age of 18 to become a Roman Catholic nun and to join the Loreto Sisters in Ireland. The Missionaries of Charity was founded by Mother Teresa in India in 1950. She was 40 years old. Her lifetime of service to the poor of Kolkata (Calcutta) made her one of the most famous people in the world. In October 2003, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II, and on September 4, 2016, Pope Francis I canonised her. She was often referred to by her followers as "the Angel of Mercy" and "Saint of the Gutter." She was a woman who heard in such an extreme and personal way the call of God that she took a path that gave up the comforts of the creature most of us covet.

Information about Mother Teresa -

Mother Teresa Date of Birth: August 27, 1910

Mother Teresa Feast Day: September 5 Mother Teresa Day in Albania:  October 19th

Mother Teresa Day of Canonization: September 4, 2016

Mother Teresa Day of Beatification: October 19, 2003

Venerated: December 20, 2002

About Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was born on August 27, 1910, as Agnesa Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the third child of the Bojaxhiu family. She was born in a family home in the centre of Skopje, at 13 Pop Kocina Street. She was baptised at the Catholic Church of the Heart of Jesus. In church schools, where she was an active member of the drama department, the literature section, and the church chorus, Gonxhe completed primary and high school successfully. Overall, she and her older brother and sister had a happy childhood. In crafts, fabric dyeing, and trade, the Bojaxhiu family had a long history of success.

Gonxhe entered an Abbey at age 12. She became a member of the Loreto Order of nuns in Ireland when Gonxhe was 18, taking the name Sister Teresa. Six months later, she was sent to Calcutta's Loreto Convent. It was there that she taught school and finally became principal. As her bond with Jesus grew deeper, she felt his sorrow for the very poor. She experienced the call of Jesus to go and offer the love of God and to be of service to Calcutta's most desperately poor. This led her to leave the school compound's comparative security, sheltered from the most abject poverty of the city, to live with the poorest of the poor on the streets.

About Mother Teresa Charities and Missionaries

Teresa sought and obtained Vatican permission to start a diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity, after working on the streets of Calcutta for two years. "The poor, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers," Teresa explained, "all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, and uncared for in society, people who have become a burden to society and are shunned by others." In Calcutta, it started as a small order of 12 members.

More than 4,000 nuns ran orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centres on all six continents by 2006, caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, elderly, alcoholics, the sick, homeless, and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine.

In 1952, the city of Calcutta made space available for the first home for the dying. Mother Teresa converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the sick, with the aid of Indian officials. She opened another hospice, Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), as well as a home for lepers named Shanti Nagar (City of Peace) and an orphanage shortly after.

Recruits and voluntary donations began to flood in for the order. The order had opened hospices, orphanages, and leper houses all over India by the 1960s. Mother Teresa was one of the first people to build AIDS homes.

Teresa's order quickly grew. Around the world, new facilities are being built. Venezuela was the order's first outpost outside of India. Others followed in Rome, Tanzania, and later in several Asian, African, and European countries, including Albania.

Mother Teresa was well-known around the world by the early 1970s. Malcolm Muggeridge's documentary film Something Beautiful for God, released in 1969, and his book of the same name, published in 1971, made her work known all over the world.

The crew felt the documentary footage they captured in bad lighting conditions was unusable. After returning from India, however, the film was discovered to be extremely well lit. Mother Teresa, Muggeridge said, had performed a miracle of "divine light." Others in the crew claimed it was more likely due to a new style of movie. Muggeridge later became a devout Catholic.

In 1982, Mother Teresa convinced Israelis and Palestinians engaged in a skirmish to avoid shooting long enough to evacuate 37 mentally ill patients from a besieged Beirut hospital.

When the Eastern European walls came down, she widened her efforts to include communist countries that had previously rejected her, launching hundreds of initiatives. Mother Teresa also visited Ethiopia to help the hungry, Chernobyl radiation victims, and earthquake victims in Armenia. Mother Teresa visited her homeland for the first time in 1991, opening a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana, Albania.

She was running 517 missions in over 100 countries by 1996. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity expanded from 12 nuns to thousands helping the "poorest of the poor" in 450 locations around the world over the years. In the United States, the first Missionaries of Charity home was founded in the South Bronx, New York.

Recognition and Acceptance

Mother teresa india.

Teresa was awarded the Padma Shri in 1962 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969 by the Indian government, more than a third of a century ago. Other Indian awards followed, including the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian honour) in 1980. Navin Chawla's official biography of Teresa was published in 1992. On August 28, 2010, the Indian government released a special 5 coin (the sum of money Teresa had when she arrived in India) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Does Mother Teresa Matter Elsewhere? 

Teresa was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding in 1962 for her contributions to South and East Asia. She had become an international star by the early 1970s. Teresa's celebrity can be traced in part to Malcolm Muggeridge's documentary Something Beautiful for God from 1969 and his book of the same name from 1971. In 1982, she was made an honorary Companion of the Order of Australia "for service to the nation of Australia and humanity at large" by governments and civilian organisations.

Several decorations were bestowed by the United Kingdom and the United States, culminating in the Order of Merit in 1983 and honorary citizenship in the United States on November 16, 1996. Teresa was given the Golden Honor of the Country by her Albanian homeland in 1994, but her acceptance of it, as well as the Haitian Legion of Honour, was controversial. Teresa was chastised for ostensibly helping the Duvaliers and crooked businessmen like Charles Keating and Robert Maxwell; she wrote to Keating's trial judge asking for clemency.

About Mother Teresa Deteriorating Health and Death

Teresa died of a heart attack in 1983 while meeting Pope John Paul II in Rome. She got a pacemaker after the second attack in 1989. She experienced heart problems in 1991, following a bout with pneumonia while in Mexico.

She offered to step down as the head of the order. The vote was performed by secret ballot. Except for her, all of the nuns voted for Mother Teresa to stay. Mother Teresa decided to remain on as the Missionaries of Charity's chief.

Mother Teresa fractured her collar bone when she fell in April 1996. She was diagnosed with malaria and left heart ventricle failure in August. She underwent heart surgery, but her health was deteriorating.

Under the assumption that Mother Teresa was being attacked by a demon, Archbishop of Calcutta Henry Sebastian D'Souza ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on her. She gave her consent to the exorcism.

Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters, a 300-member related brotherhood, and over 100,000 lay volunteers running 610 missions in 123 countries at the time of her death. Hospices and homes for HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis patients, soup kitchens, children's and family therapy services, orphanages, and schools were among them.

The Government of India honoured Mother Teresa with a full state funeral, an honour usually reserved for presidents and prime ministers, in appreciation of her service to India's poor of all faiths. Within both secular and religious cultures, her death was widely viewed as a great tragedy.

Awards and Commemorations

Mother Teresa was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding in 1962. Paul VI conferred the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize on her in 1971. Other honours she received included the Kennedy Prize (1971), the Balzan Prize (1978) for humanity, unity, and brotherhood among peoples, the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975), the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985), and the Congressional Gold Medal (1994), honorary citizenship of the United States on November 16, 1996 (one of only two people to receive this honour during their lifetimes), and honorary citizenship of the United States on November 16, 1997 (one of only two people to receive this honour during their lifetimes).

In 1973, Teresa won the Templeton Prize. In 1981, Jean-Claude Duvalier conferred the Legion d'Honneur upon her. She was the first and only living person to be featured on an Indian postage stamp.

About Mother Teresa Memorial Museum

In Skopje's Feudal Tower, where she used to play as a child, a memorial room (museum) was created. The museum houses a large number of pieces from Mother Theresa's life in Skopje as well as relics from her later years. A model of her family home, built by the artist Vojo Georgievski, can be found in the Memorial Room.

An area with a statue of Mother Teresa, a memorial park, and a fountain is located next to the Memorial Room.

About Mother Teresa Memorial Plaque

The house of Mother Theresa used to be situated on the outskirts of Skopje's city mall. “On this spot was the house where Gondza Bojadzic — Mother Teresa — was born on August 26, 1910,” according to the memorial plaque, which was dedicated in March of 1998.

FAQs on Mother Teresa Biography

Q1. Where is Mother Teresa from? Is Mother Teresa Indian?

Ans: Mother Teresa, also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in the Roman Catholic Church, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary who was born in Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia) in 1910 when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire's Kosovo Vilayet. In her words, She was an Albanian by blood, an Indian by citizenship and by faith a catholic nun.

Q2. What is Mother Teresa Remembered for?

Ans: Mother Teresa founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic women's religious congregation dedicated to assisting the needy. She was canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016 and is recognised as one of the greatest humanitarians of the twentieth century.

Q3. What is Mother Teresa Feast?

Ans: Mother Teresa was canonised on September 4th, 2016 and the anniversary of her death which is September 5th, is the feast of Mother Teresa.

MOTHER TERESA Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on 26th august 1910, at the 14 Pop Kochina Street, at what is now main square Macedonia. She was the youngest child in the family. She had an oldest sister Aga and older brother Lazar. Aga was born in 1904, and Lazar in 1907. Information on her father’s origin remains vague. According to some records he was a merchant, according to others a pharmacy assistant. He was also on the Skopje City Council, where he was the only Catholic member. He died in 1919. Her mother, Drana, was a housewife and an extremely religious woman. She came from the Bernaj family in Prizren. Drana’s father was a merchant and owner of a large estate..

Bojaxhiu family was a wealthy family and they had one cardinal rule – to help everybody who needs help. Drana was very hard-working woman. Following the death of her husband, she took up sewing and embroidering, in order to make a secure life for her children.

It was said that her father had chosen the name Gonxha, an old Turkish name meaning rose bud. She started school when she was seven, first attending the church school at “Sacred Heart of Jesus”, and later on the state school. She received her first Communion at the Catholic Church in Skopje. In the same church she was baptized just one day after she was born. Gonxha played the mandolin and sang in the choir, acted in the church and city theaters, danced, recited, wrote poetry.

At the beginning of the XXth century, the Catholic Church Sacred heart of Jesus in Skopje was led by the Jesuits. Father Franjo Jamrekovic, often was reading letters from the missionaries from India and Africa, to the believers. He was vividly explaining to them about the life of the missionaries.

In this way he played a major role in the decision of the young Gondza to leave for India and to dedicate her life to God.

The final decision to leave Skopje, Gonxha made when she received a call from God when she was 12 years old.

The Sisters known as the Loreto Sisters belong to the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary founded in 1609 by a twenty-four-year-old woman, Mary Ward. Mary Ward and her first companions established their first school at St Omer (now in France) in a house, which is still there, although it is now a private residence.

Today the congregation is engaged in a wide variety of new ministries: literacy programmes, spiritual direction, counseling, managing shelters for homeless women as well as several aspects of the movement for greater justice and peace in the world. They are active in every continent. The Loreto Sisters operate some 150 schools worldwide, educating over 70,000 students.

At the age of eighteen, moved by a desire to become a missionary, Gonxha left her home and her home town Skopje to join the Sisters of Loreto, in Dublin, Ireland. There she chose the name Teresa after her patron St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She learned English there, because English was the language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach schoolchildren in India. Although her stay in Dublin was short, the sisters remember her as “very small, shy and quiet.”

On 1st of December 1928 she leaves for India by ship. During her traveling she wrote the song “Farewell” (originally written on Croatian – “Oproshtaj”) in which she expresses her thoughts and feelings about her home town and family and about the distant and unknown India. She arrives in Calcutta, India on 6th of January 1929.

On 25th of May 1931 she gives her first vows as Sister Teresa in Darjeeling and teaches geography and catechism in St. Mary’s School in Calcutta.

MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY

On 10th of September 1946 during her travelling to Darjeeling receives “call within a call” – an inspiration to leave the Loreto convent and to start taking care for the sick and poor.

On 12th of April 1948 she receives a decree by Pope Pius XII – a permission from Vatican to start her mission among the poorest of the poor.

On 7th of October 1950 the Society of the Missionaries Sisters of Charity – at that time 12 members – is officially established as a diocesan congregation. In 1965 the Missionaries of Charity receive pontifical recognition.

On 25th of March she establishes Missionaries of Charity Brothers.

Now, there are more than 5000 active Missionaries Sisters in more than 137 countries around the world.

Memorial House for Mother Teresa – Skopje

The desire to pay respect to Skopje’s most famous person and the only Nobel Peace Prize winner from Macedonia culminated in the realization of a long-standing vision – building a Memorial House for Mother Teresa. Accordingly, the foundation stone of the Memorial House was laid on May 9, 2008. The building, dedicated to the most humane woman in the world, was completed in just nine months. For visitors, the Memorial House was open on January 30, 2009.

The location of the museum is not randomly chosen. That is to say, on this exact place the old Catholic Church “Sacred Heart of Jesus” used to stand. It is where Mother Teresa, then Gonxha Bojaxhiu was baptized just one day after her birth.

Since the opening of the Memorial House in 2009 until today, the number of visitors ranges from 80000 to 100000 per year, including a number of presidents, ministers, ambassadors, church dignitaries, the niece of Mother Teresa – Age, Cardinal Pietro Parolin (Vatican secretary of state) and others.

The exhibit area in the Memorial House of Mother Teresa was conceived so as to look like an urban house from the early 20th century.

The exhibit itself begins with photographs of old Skopje from the early 20th century, when Macedonia was still part of the Ottoman Empire. The aim is to recapture the spirit of this part of the Balkans as a crossroads between the oriental East and the Christian West. This mixture of cultures was woven into every thread of daily life and is best illustrated through the display of furniture and clothes, and the handiwork of silversmiths and goldsmiths.

The aim of the exhibit is to follow the life of Mother Teresa from her childhood spent in her native Skopje through the years spent as a Missionary of Charity, all the way until her death and beatification.

The most important items in this museum are the signature white sari with blue stripes (second class relic), the official habit of the Missionaries of Charity, copy of the Baptism certificate from the Catholic Church Sacred Heart of Jesus, authorized copies of documents with her handwriting and her awards.

Among the documents on display is the prayer book written by Mother Teresa, a copy of the Nobel Peace Prize received in 1979 and a copy of the letter sent to the Mayor of Skopje, Metodi Antov, on the occasion of her receiving the prize.

The exhibit boasts numerous photographs which vividly capture the humanitarian work of the sisters of Mother Teresa’s order. Amphitheater

The basement part of the museum is designed as a multimedia center that hosts various projections, promotions, exhibitions, educational projects related to the life and humanitarian work of Mother Teresa.

Above the gallery there is a small chapel where the priests from the Catholic Church hold services. At the honorary masses associated with important dates related to Mother Teresa her relic is presented.

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Mother Teresa: Saint of the Poor

Mother Teresa, also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was born on August 26, 1910, and given the name of Agnes.  She was baptized on August 27, and she always considered this her “true birthday.”

At the age of eighteen, Agnes joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland.  She hoped to learn English so she could become a missionary with the Sisters of Loreto in India.

On May 24, Agnes made her first profession and took the name of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the patron of Missionaries.  Since another sister had taken the name Therese, Agnes chose the Spanish spelling and became known as Sister Teresa.  During this time, Sister Teresa worked as a teacher.  On May 14, 1937, Sister Teresa made her final profession.

“You can help your children celebrate the feast of Saint Mother Teresa with her magnet !” – Theresa 

Serving the Poor

Sister Teresa was transferred to the convent school of the Sisters of Loreto in Calcutta, and she taught there for almost twenty years.  During her years teaching, she became disturbed by the poverty that abounded in Calcutta.

On September 10, 1946, Sister Teresa experienced “the call within the call.”  She describes the experience in the following way,

“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.”

In 1948, Teresa donned a cotton sari (traditional Indian garb) with a blue border.  Armed with Indian citizen and basic medical training, Teresa ventured into the slums.  She founded a school and began caring for the poor and the hungry.  Women began joining her in her work in 1949.  Teresa then began formulating the groundwork for a new religious community dedicated to serving “the poorest of the poor.”

Missionaries of Charity

The road to founding a new community was filled with difficulties but that did not discourage Teresa.  On October 7, 1950, the Vatican approved Teresa’s new community of thirteen sisters which would care for those who had no one to care for them – “the poorest of the poor,” the unlovable, and the burdensome, and the shunned.  Teresa became Mother Teresa and served as superior general of the Missionaries of Charity from 1950 until her death in 1997.

Each member makes the customary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  However, they also make a fourth vow – to give wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor .  In 1963, Mother Teresa also founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers.

At the time of Mother Teresa’s death, the Missionaries of Charity had grown to more than 4,000 sisters and 300 brothers working at 610 missions in more than 123 countries.

Honors and Awards

Mother Teresa gave so much to so many people.  In her own words,

“By blood, I am Albanian.  By citizenship, an Indian.  By faith, I am a Catholic nun.  As to my calling, I belong to the world.  As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.”

Mother Teresa was fluent in five languages and traveled often.  Her work quickly gained global recognition and she received many awards including:

India’s highest civilian award (the Bharat Ratna ) in 1970; the Inaugural Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971; the Albert Schwitzer International Prize in 1975; the Pacem in Terris Award, the La Storta Medal for Human Service , and the Poverello Medal in 1976; the Balzan Prize in 1 978; the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979; the Order of Merit in 1983; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 .

Mother Teresa’s official biography was published in 1992 and on November 16, 1996, she was given honorary United States citizenship.  Over the years, Mother Teresa received several honorary degrees and many more awards than those that are listed here.

Lasting Legacy

In 1983, Mother Teresa had a heart attack while she was visiting Pope Saint John Paul II.  In 1989, she had another heart attack.  After an attack of Pneumonia and more heart problems in 1991, Mother Teresa offered to resign as superior general, but the sisters voted for her to stay and she agreed.

Mother Teresa fell and broke her collarbone in April of 1996.  In August she contracted malaria and had heart failure.  Her health steadily declined and on March 13, 1997, Mother Teresa resigned as superior general of the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997 at the age of 87.  She was beatified on October 19, 2003 by Pope Saint John Paul II.  On September 4, 2016, Pope Francis canonized Blessed Mother Teresa!  Saint Teresa’s feast day is September 5 and she is the patron Saint of World Youth Day and The Missionaries of Charity.  On September 6, 2017, she was also chosen as the co-patron of the Archdiocese of Calcutta along with Saint Francis Xavier.

Her love for the poor and the marginalized should inspire us to serve others and to find Christ even in those we consider unlovable.  Love is a choice and every day, Mother Teresa chose love and service.  She found Christ in the poorest of the poor and we can find Christ in all those around us.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta, please pray for us!

“Intense love does not measure.  It just gives.”  Mother Teresa