Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries. They run hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children's and family counselling programmes; orphanages; and schools. Members must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, as well as a fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor".
Mother Teresa at a pro-life meeting in 1986 in Bonn, West Germany
Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2003, she was beatified as "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta". A second miracle was credited to her intercession by Pope Francis, in December 2015, paving the way for her to be recognised as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
A controversial figure both during her life and after her death, like Jesus and almost all the Christian saints, Mother Teresa was widely admired by many for her charitable works. She was both praised and criticised for her anti-abortion views. She also received criticism for conditions in the hospices for which she was responsible. Her official biography was written by an Indian civil servant, Navin Chawla, and published in 1992.
Early life
She was the youngest of the children of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai) Her father, who was involved in the politics of the Albanian community in Macedonia, died in 1919 when she was eight years old. Her father may have been from Prizren, Kosovo, while her mother may have been from a village near Gjakova.
Memorial House of Mother Teresa, in her native Skopje.
According to a biography written by Joan Graff Clucas, in her early years Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal, and by age 12 had become convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life. Her final resolution was taken on 15 August 1928, while praying at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimage.
Agnes left home in 1928 at the age of 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English, with a view to becoming a missionary. English was the language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach schoolchildren in India. She never again saw her mother or her sister. Her family continued to live in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to Tirana in Albania.
Missionaries of charity with the traditional sari.
She arrived in India in 1929, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains, where she learnt Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School, a schoolhouse close to her convent. She took her first religious vows as a nun on 24 May 1931. At that time she chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries, but because one nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes opted for the Spanish spelling of Teresa.
She took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta. Teresa served there for almost twenty years and in 1944 was appointed headmistress.
Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. The Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.
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