In fact, as she confided to her friend, co-worker and American author, Eileen Egan, that was the date on which she was christened Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. The date which marked the beginning of her Christian life was undoubtedly the more important to Mother Teresa, but she was none the less actually born in Skopje, Serbia, on the previous day.
Mother Teresa died on September 5, Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page. Nobel Prizes Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in , for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
See them all presented here. Select the category or categories you would like to filter by Physics. She would always open her doors to the poor and share a meal with them. Mrs Bojaxhui is said to have told Mother Teresa never to eat alone, to always share the little she had with other people.
In her early life, Mother Teresa attended a primary school run by nuns. She later went to a government run high school. It was also during this time that she had an epiphany on her journey as a missionary while on an annual pilgrimage to the Church of the Black Madonna in Letnice, she was 12 years old. In , at 18 years old, then known as Agnes, Mother Teresa embarked on a journey to become a nun.
She joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin, Ireland. Lisbon trains — by Threeohsix — Wikimedia Commons. While on the train, she said she heard Christ asking her to take on a new role; go to the slums of Calcutta and help the poor and the sick.
She was then a teacher. It was not an easy decision. She was bound by the oath of obedience and could not leave the convent without official permission. After two years of lobbying, her request was granted, and she stepped out of the convent adorning the famous blue and white sari. She took a six-month medical training to equip herself with basic skills.
The year saw the birth of the Missionaries of Charity. To most people, she is a role model of charity, compassion, and selflessness. To the homeless and destitute, she is the beacon that gives hope to their desperate existence. She changed the world and inspired a lot of people in her own way. She continued to devote her life to caring for the sick, poor, and disadvantaged.
In the process, she challenged stereotypes, broke boundaries, and taught us the true essence of charity. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a missionary nun who was one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. She founded the Missionaries of Charity — a religious organization dedicated to helping the poor. Through this, she was able to create programs and initiatives that made her an icon of charity around the world.
The world came to know her as the hunched old lady wearing a white sari with blue borders. But her stature belied her strength and her passion for serving the poorest of the poor.
Her father was a businessman who traded medicines and other goods and also worked as a construction contractor. He was also involved in politics and died when Mother Teresa was just 8 years old. At a young age, she became fascinated with the lives of missionaries in Bengal and their charitable efforts. Then at 12, she decided to commit herself to religious life.
Four years later, she left her home to join the Sisters of Loreto in Rathfarnham, Ireland with the intent of becoming a missionary. After a year in the Loreto Convent, she was sent to Darjeeling in India to begin her novitiate.
There she learned Bengali and later became a principal at a charity school near their convent. Though far from luxurious, her life as a school principal was comfortable. But God had a different plan for her. In , the Bengal province experienced one of its worst famines. 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 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. 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 , 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 s and s, she established a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics.
In , Mother Teresa traveled to New York City to open her first American-based house of charity, and in the summer of , she secretly went to Beirut, Lebanon, where she crossed between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut to aid children of both faiths. By the time of her death in , the Missionaries of Charity numbered more than 4, — in addition to thousands more lay volunteers — with foundations in countries around the world. The Decree of Praise was just the beginning, as Mother Teresa received various honors for her tireless and effective charity.
In , Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work "in bringing help to suffering humanity. 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.
In , 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.
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