Mother Teresa Biography

(1910–1997)

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.

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.

In 1979, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. She died in
September 1997 and was beatified in October 2003. In December 2015, Pope Francis recognized
a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, clearing the way for her to be canonized on
September 4, 2016.

Mother Teresa at a hospice for the destitute and dying in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, 1969.

Photo: Terry Fincher/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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 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 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.
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."

Legacy

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."