Who Was Mother Teresa?

Mother Teresa 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, the dying, orphans, lepers,
and AIDS sufferers in over 100 countries. Mother
Teresa's selfless effort to help those in need has
caused many to regard her as a model humanitarian.
Dates: August 26, 1910 -- September 5, 1997
Mother Teresa Also Known As: Agnes Gonxha
Bojaxhiu (birth name), "the Saint of the Gutters"

Overview of Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa's task was overwhelming. She started
out as just one woman, with no money and no
supplies, trying to help the millions of poor, starving,
and dying that lived on the streets of India. Despite
others' misgivings, Mother Teresa was confident that
God would provide.

Birth and Childhood

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, now known as Mother
Teresa, was the third and final child born to
herAlbanianCatholic 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 eight 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.

The Call
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, 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 made the difficult
decision 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 January 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 in to 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 live 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 September 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 in order
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 August 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, 38year-old Mother Teresa felt ready to venture out into
the slums of Calcutta, India in December of 1948.

In March 1949, Mother Teresa was joined by her first

helper, a former pupil from Loreto. Soon she had ten
former pupils helping her.
At the end of Mother Teresa's provisionary year, she
petitioned to form her own order of nuns, the
Missionaries of Charity. Her request was granted
by Pope Pius XII; the Missionaries of Charity was
established on October 7, 1950.

Helping the Sick, the Dying, the

Orphaned, and the Lepers
There were literally 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 August 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. These people were given the
opportunity to die with dignity, with the rituals of
their faith.

of

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Founding
the
Charity

Missionaries

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 theNobel 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 just so
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.

Old and Frail

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

September 5, 1997 (just five days afterPrincess
Diana), 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
over 4,000 Missionary of Charity Sisters, in 610
centers in 123 countries.

Mother Teresa Becomes 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
October 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.
It is expected that Mother Teresa will be canonized
(pronounced a saint) in September 2016.