Mother Teresa of Calcutta(The Story)

Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), Roman Catholic nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, and recipient of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her humanitarian work (see Nobel Prizes). In 2003, six years after her death, Mother Teresa began a passage to sainthood with her beatification by Pope John Paul II. Beatification is the first step toward canonization, the act that proclaims a person’s sainthood.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 27, 1910, to Albanian parents in Skopje, which at the time was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. (The city is now the capital of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.) At the age of 12, she decided to become a nun. At age 18, she joined the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland. After training in Dublin for a few months, she went to Dārjiling (Darjeeling), India, where the order had missions. When she took her first religious vows there in 1931, she chose the name Teresa for Saint Theresa of Lisieux, the patron saint of foreign missionaries. For the next 15 years she taught at Saint Mary’s High School in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Disturbed by the presence of the sick and dying in the city’s streets, she felt called, in her words, “to leave the convent and help the poor, while living among them.” In 1948 she was granted permission to leave the convent and work as an independent nun. That year she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order to help the sick and destitute.

In 1950 the Missionaries of Charity received official approval from the Roman Catholic Church, and Mother Teresa became a citizen of India. Members take four vows on acceptance by the religious order. In addition to the three basic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, a fourth vow is required pledging service to the poor, whom Mother Teresa described as the embodiment of Christ.

In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart) Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta. She also opened orphanages, hospitals for lepers, and other homes. By the time of her Nobel Prize, branches of the Missionaries of Charity had been established in many countries. In awarding the prize, the Nobel Committee cited her work in “bringing help to suffering humanity.” She was forced to scale back her activities in 1990 because of declining health. Mother Teresa: In My Own Words, a collection of her anecdotes and quotations, was published in 1996. In 1997, because of Mother Teresa’s poor health, Sister Nirmala was chosen to succeed her as leader of the Missionaries of Charity. People around the world mourned her death on September 5, 1997. How to cite this article:

"Mother Teresa of Calcutta." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.