MOTHER TERESA

Mother Teresa was born in Skopje in what is now Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. Her original

name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Her father, who was of Albanian descent, ran a small farm. At

the age of twelve, while attending a Roman Catholic elementary school, she records that she knew

she had a vocation to help the poor. She decided to train for missionary work, and a few years later

made India her choice. At the age of eighteen she left the parental home in Skopje and joined the

Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with a mission in Calcutta. After a few months' training

in Dublin she was sent to India, where in 1928 she took her initial vows as a nun.

From 1929 to 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

1946 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to

working among the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she started an open-air school for homeless

children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming from various church

organisations, as well as from the municipal authorities. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work, and on

October 7, 1950, she received permission 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. Today the order comprises some one thousand sisters and

brothers in India, of whom a small number are non-Indian. Many have been trained as doctors, nurses and social workers, and

are in a position to provide effective help for the slum population as well as undertaking relief work in connection with such

natural catastrophes as floods, epidemics, famine and swarms of refugees.

Mother Teresa has fifty relief projects operating in India: these comprise work among slum-dwellers, children's homes, homes

for the dying, clinics and a leper colony. The order has also spread to other countries, and undertakes relief work for the

poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The order has also established itself in Italy,

Great Britain, Ireland and the United States.

Mother Teresa's work has aroused considerable attention throughout the world, and she has received a number of awards and

distinctions: in 1971 she received the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize, in 1972 the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international

peace and understanding, and in 1979 the Balzan Prize for promoting peace and brotherhood among the nations.