Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997), born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and missionary who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950. [1] The order opened homes for the dying, orphanages, clinics and shelters, and grew into an international congregation active in more than a hundred countries. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 [2] and was canonised by the Roman Catholic Church in 2016 as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. [3]
Early life
She was born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire and now the capital of North Macedonia, into an ethnic Albanian family. Her father, a merchant, died when she was a young child, and she was raised by her mother in a devout Catholic household closely involved in the local parish. She became interested in missionary work as a teenager. [1]
At eighteen she left home to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland, where she learned English, and in 1929 she was sent to India. She took her religious vows in the 1930s and taught for close to two decades at a Loreto convent school in Entally, in eastern Calcutta, latterly as its headmistress. [3]
Founding the Missionaries of Charity
In 1946, travelling by train to Darjeeling, she experienced what she called a "call within a call" to leave the convent and work among the poorest of the poor. With permission from her superiors she left Loreto in 1948, took Indian citizenship, trained briefly in basic medicine and began working in the slums of Calcutta, wearing the white sari with blue borders that became the habit of her order. [1]
The Missionaries of Charity was established as a diocesan congregation in 1950 and recognised as a pontifical congregation in 1965. Its earliest works included Nirmal Hriday, a home for the dying at Kalighat, followed by homes for abandoned children, clinics for people with leprosy and hostels for the destitute. The order spread across India and then abroad, adding a male branch, contemplative wings and lay co-workers. [3]
International recognition
From the 1960s Mother Teresa became one of the most widely recognised religious figures in the world, and her work drew extensive media attention and large donations. Her honours included the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Templeton Prize and the Balzan Prize. India conferred on her the Padma Shri and later the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian honour, and the United States awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and honorary citizenship. [1]
She accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1979, declining the customary ceremonial banquet and asking that its cost be given to the poor. [2]
Criticism
Critics, including the journalist Christopher Hitchens and writers in medical journals, questioned the standard of medical care in her homes, the management of the order's finances and her acceptance of donations from politically compromised donors; her opposition to contraception and abortion also drew criticism. Supporters responded that the homes were intended as places of comfort for the dying rather than hospitals. [1]
Death and canonisation
Mother Teresa suffered increasing ill health through the 1990s and stepped down as head of the order shortly before her death in Calcutta on 5 September 1997, by which time the Missionaries of Charity numbered several thousand sisters in well over a hundred countries. The Indian government gave her a state funeral. [3]
Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003, and Pope Francis declared her a saint on 4 September 2016. Posthumously published letters revealed long periods of spiritual desolation in her inner life. [1]
