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.
Synopsis
Baptized on August 27, 1910, in
Skopje, Macedonia, Mother Teresa
taught in India for 17 years before
she experienced her 1946 "call within
a call" to devote herself to caring
for the sick and poor. Her order
established a hospice; centers for the
blind, aged, and disabled; and a
leper colony. She was summoned to
Rome in 1968, and in 1979 received
the Nobel Peace Prize for her
humanitarian work.
Early Life
Catholic nun and missionary Mother
Teresa was born circa August 26, 1910
(her date of birth is disputed), in
Skopje, the current capital of the
Republic of Macedonia. On August 27,
1910, a date frequently cited as her
birthday, 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 Bojaxhiu
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 was only
8 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, Mother Teresa
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 Mother Teresa
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."
Religious Calling
Mother Teresa attended a convent-
run primary school and then a state-
run secondary school. As a girl,
Mother Teresa sang in the local
Sacred Heart choir and was often
asked to sing solos. The congregation
made an annual pilgrimage to the
chapel of the Madonna of Letnice
atop Black Mountain in Skopje, and
it was on one such trip at the age of
12 that Mother Teresa first felt a
calling to a 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
Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was there
that she took the name Sister Mary
Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.
A year later, Mother Teresa traveled
on to Darjeeling, India for the
novitiate period; in May 1931, Mother
Teresa 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. Mother 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.
A New Calling
However, on September 10, 1946,
Mother Teresa experienced a second
calling that would forever transform
her life. She was riding a train from
Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills
for a retreat when 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. "I want Indian Nuns,
Missionaries of Charity, who would be
my fire of love amongst the poor, the
sick, the dying and the little
children," she heard Christ say to
her on the train that day. "You are I
know the most incapable person—
weak and sinful but just because you
are that—I want to use You for My
glory. Wilt thou refuse?"
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 from the local
Archbishop Ferdinand Périer to
pursue this new calling. That August,
wearing the blue and white sari that
she would always 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 goal than
to aid "the unwanted, the unloved,
the uncared for."
The Missionaries of Charity
Mother Teresa quickly translated this
somewhat vague 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
12 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.
International Charity 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
over 4,000—in addition to thousands
more lay volunteers—with 610
foundations in 123 countries on all
seven continents.
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. And in 1979, Mother
Teresa won her highest honor when
she was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in recognition of her work "in
bringing help to suffering humanity."
Controversy
Despite this widespread praise,
Mother Teresa's life and work have
not gone without criticism. 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.
Death and Legacy
After several years of deteriorating
health in which she suffered from
heart, lung and kidney problems,
Mother Teresa died on September 5,
1997 at the age of 87. Since her
death, Mother Teresa has remained
in the public spotlight. In particular,
the publication of her private
correspondence in 2003 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 of perfect faith,
they have also made Mother Teresa a
more relatable and human figure to
all those who experience doubt in
their beliefs.
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.
However, 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."