The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C., commonly known as
Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), was an Albanian-born, Indian
Roman Catholic Religious Sister.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman
Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters
and is active in 133 countries. They run hospices and homes for people with
HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; children's and family
counseling programmes; orphanages; and schools. Members of the order must
adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and the fourth vow, to
give "Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest of the poor".
Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours
including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In late 2003, she was beatified, the
third step toward possible sainthood, giving her the title "Blessed Teresa
of Calcutta". A second miracle credited to her intercession is required
before she can be recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church.
Admired and respected by many, she has also been accused of
failing to provide medical care or painkillers, misusing charitable money, and
maintaining positive relationships with dictators.
She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (on 26
August 1910. She considered 27 August, the day she was baptised, to be her
"true birthday". Her birthplace was Skopje, now capital of the
Republic of Macedonia, but at the time part of the Ottoman Empire to ethnic
Albanian parents.
She was the youngest of the children of Nikollë and
Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai). Her father, who was involved in Albanian politics,
died in 1919 when she was eight years old. After her father's death, her mother
raised her as a Roman Catholic. Her father, Nikollë Bojaxhiu, may have been
from Prizren, Kosovo[a] while her mother may have been from a village near
Đakovica, Kosovo.
On 10 September 1946, Teresa experienced what she later
described as "the call within the call" while travelling by train to
the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat. "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." As one author later
noted, "Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become
Mother Teresa".
She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948,
replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari
decorated with a blue border. Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent a
few months in Patna to receive a basic medical training in the Holy Family
Hospital and then ventured out into the slums. Initially she started a school
in Motijhil (Calcutta); soon she started tending to the needs of the destitute
and starving. In the beginning of 1949 she was joined in her effort by a group
of young women and laid the foundations to create a new religious community
helping the "poorest among the poor".
Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian
officials, including the prime minister, who expressed his appreciation.
Teresa wrote in her diary that her 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 wrote 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.[29]
Teresa received Vatican permission on 7 October 1950 to
start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of
Charity.[30] 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."
International charity
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."
In 1982, at the height of the Siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa
rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary
cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas.[43] Accompanied
by Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the devastated
hospital to evacuate the young patients.[44]
When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the
late 1980s, she expanded her efforts to Communist countries that had previously
rejected the Missionaries of Charity, embarking on dozens of projects. She was
undeterred by criticism about her firm stand against abortion and divorce
stating, "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and
do your own work." She visited the Soviet republic of Armenia following
the 1988 Spitak earthquake,[45] and met with Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of
the Council of Ministers.
Mother Teresa travelled to assist and minister to the hungry
in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl, and earthquake victims in Armenia.
In 1991, Mother Teresa returned for the first time to her homeland and opened a
Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana, Albania.
By 1996, Mother Teresa was operating 517 missions in more
than 100 countries. Over the years, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity
grew from twelve to thousands serving the "poorest of the poor" in
450 centres around the world. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the
United States was established in the South Bronx, New York; by 1984 the order
operated 19 establishments throughout the country.[51] Mother Teresa was fluent
in five languages: Bengali, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, English, and Hindi.
