Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

For over forty years, she ministered to the needs of the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying of Calcutta (Kolkata)

Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu IPA:(August 26, 1910 " September 5, 1997), was an Albanian Roman Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity and won the Nobel Peace Prize in1979 for her humanitarian work.

For over forty years, she ministered to the needs of the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying of Calcutta (Kolkata). As herreligious order grew she expanded her ministry to other countries. By the 1970s she had become internationally famed as a humanitarian andadvocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book, Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge.

A famed left-leaning journalist, he credited her with inspiring his conversion to Catholic ismlate in life. Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and designated Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.[1][2] However, she and the order she founded have attracted criticism in latter years with respect to care of the sick and destination of financial contributions.

Biography Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje*, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary tospread the love of Christ.

At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun.

From 1931to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.

Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming.

This made it possible for her to extend the scope ofher work. On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. Today the order comprises Active and Contemplative branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries.

In 1963 both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the Active branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in 1984 the Priest branch was established.

The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of naturalc atastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29,1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.

Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972).

She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsay say awards. From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1971-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore FrAongsmyr, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les PrixNobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures.

To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. Early life Agnes Bojaxhiu was born on 26 August,[3] 1910, in the center of Uskub, inthe Kosovo Province of the Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, Macedonia).

Herparents were Albanians; her father, Nikoll, was originally from Mirdita(North Albania) and her mother, Dranafille, came from akovica (Gjakov).Raised as a Catholic by her parents, her father died when she was about eight years old.

During her early years, she was fascinated with stories of missionary life and service. By the time she was twelve, Agnes was convinced that her vocation should be a religious life.[5]She left her homeat age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary.

Agnes would never again set eyes on her mother or sister.[6]She initially went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland in order to learn English, which was the language nuns used to instruct India's school children. Arriving in India in 1929, she began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayas.

She took her first vows as a nun on 24May 1931, choosing the name Teresa after the patron saint of missionaries. She took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in eastern Calcutta. Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.

A famine in 1943 brought misery and death to the city; the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.

The Missionaries of Charity On September 10, 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" while travelling to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor whileliving among them.

It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith." She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her long, traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border and then venturing out into the slums."

Initially she started a school in Motijhil; shortly thereafter, she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the Prime Minister, who expressed his appreciation. Teresa's first year was fraught with difficulties. She had no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies.

Teresa experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months. She recorded in her diary:" Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson.

The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health.

Then the comfort of Loreto [her former order] came to tempt me. 'You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again, 'the Tempter kept on saying ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come. "Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying in Kolkata (Calcutta).Teresa received Vatican permission on October 7, 1950 to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity.

Its mission was to care for, in her own words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the City of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday).

Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quoran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels " loved and wanted.

"She soon opened a home for those suffering from Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace).

The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy out reach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food. As the Missionaries of Charity took in increasing numbers of lost children, Mother Teresa felt the need to create a home for them. In 1955 she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.

The order soon began to attract both recruits and charitable donations, and by the 1960s had opened hospices, orphanages, and leper houses all over India. She was one of the first to establish homes for AIDS victims. Mother Teresa's order started to grow rapidly, with new homes opening throughout the globe. The order's first house outside India was in Venezuela, opened in 1965 with five sisters.

Others followed in Rome,Tanzania, and Austria in 1968; during the 1970s the order would open housesand foundations in dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and theUnited States.