Mother Teresa

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Mother Teresa of Calcutta (August 27, 1910 - September 5, 1997), was a revered Christian nun, missionary, peace advocate and anti-abortion activist who set up a world-wide network called the Missionaries of Charity. This network engages in Christian missionary activity and to some extent in local charity. Mother Teresa is most famous for her work with the poor in Calcutta.
Life and work
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Ottoman Empire (present-day Republic of Macedonia) of Albanian parents. Her last name translates to house painter from Albanian. Her mother, Dranafila Bernaj, was Albanian, but the nationality of her father, Nikolla Bojaxhiu is disputed. Some believe that he may have been of Vlach (Tzintzar) instead of Albanian descent. At the age of 18, she attended the Christian order "Our Lady of Loreto" in Ireland. In 1928 she went to teach at a convent school in Kolkata (Calcutta), India called the "Saint Mary's High School." She spent twenty years working there.

On May 24, 1932 she took her final vows at Darjeeling, India and left the convent in 1948 to receive medical training in Paris, then to work in the Indian slums. She opened "The Mission of Charity" in 1950 to help Orphans. In 1957 she and her congregation began working with lepers and victims of disasters all over the world. She opened centers for the blind, sick, orphaned children and others who were in need of help. Her order expanded to 150 nations and, according to estimates at the time of sister's death, employed 4000 unpaid sisters. Many of the order's stations engage primarily or exclusively in proselytization.

She was awarded the Pope John XXIII peace prize in 1971 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. An excerpt from her Nobel Prize acceptance speech:


I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.


Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying in Calcutta. Critics state that conditions in the order's facilities are insufficient for proper care and may in fact contribute to the spread of diseases. As she often did, she also used the opportunity to warn against abortion, which she considered reprehensible:


But I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing, direct murder by the mother herself. (...) Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace. We who are here today were wanted by our parents. We would not be here if our parents had not wanted us.

We want children, and we love them. But what about the other millions? Many are concerned about the children, like those in Africa, who die in great numbers either from hunger or for other reasons. But millions of children die intentionally, by the will of their mothers. Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves, or one another? Nothing.
She was similarly opposed against contraception, and at an open air mass in Knock, Ireland, she said: "Let us promise our Lady who loves Ireland so much, that we will never allow this country a single abortion. And no contraceptives."

Other awards bestowed upon her include:

1971 Prize of Good Samaritan (Boston),
1971 Kennedy Prize,
1972 Koruna Dut Angel of Charity (Bestowed by the President of India),
1973 Templeton Prize,
1974 Mater et Magistra,
1975 Albert Schweitzer International Prize,
1977 Doctor Honoris Causa in Technology (University of Cambridge),
1980 Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.
1982 Doctor Honoris Cause (Catholic University of Brussels),
1985 US Presidential Medal of Freedom (President Reagan),
1996 Honorary Citizen of the United States (She was the 4th person to ever receive this honor)

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Mother Teresa captured the imagination of the world with her dedication to the poor. In 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of "the throwaway of society".


Mother Teresa's work with the order she founded, the Missionaries of Charity, is recognised by the Vatican. Here, she kisses a statuette of Jesus after being awarded the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize by Pope Paul VI in 1971.


When the West started to take notice of Mother Teresa in the 1970s, she was known primarily for her work with the poor in Calcutta. Here, in 1971, she meets children in Belfast before opening a mission there.


Mother Teresa cradles an armless baby girl at her order's orphanage in Calcutta in 1978. The order now helps the sick, the destitute and the dying in more than 100 countries.


By the late 1970s, Mother Teresa was known around the world as the Living Saint. Here she receives the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize from Professor John Sanness.


Here, Mother Teresa comforts a young victim of the Bhopal gas disaster in India. The disaster occurred in December 1984, killing thousands.


In June 1985, Mother Teresa was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan, who said of her: "Some people, some very few people are, in the truest sense, citizens of the world; Mother Teresa is."


Mother Teresa joins Pope John Paul II in the Popemobile on his 1986 visit to Calcutta. The Pope used Mother Teresa as a spokesperson for papal causes.


Nuns from the Missionaries of Charity sing Happy Birthday to Mother Teresa on her 80th birthday. The Nobel Peace laureate was born in Skopje in 1910.


Princess Diana walks with Mother Teresa after a private meeting at a convent in the Bronx, New York, in June 1997. The two women died within days of each other less than two months later.


Mother Teresa died on 5 September 1997 and was buried eight days later. Despite a steady drizzle, tens of thousands of people turned out in Calcutta to say farewell.

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Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square to watch the Pope beatify Mother Teresa.


In India, the city of Calcutta also remembered the nun who devoted her life to its poor.


The Indian woman whose "miracle" cancer cure is cited as proof of Mother Teresa's sanctity was at the Mass in Rome.


For the ailing Pope, the beatification was a cherished aim which he saw through to fruition.


It is the last formal step before sainthood for Mother Teresa, who died a mere six years ago


Nuns from Mother Teresa's own order, the Missionaries of Charity, were present at the moving ceremony...


... as were nuns from orders all over the world, many waving flags in celebration.


Mother Teresa's status as an icon is rising further, both literally and figuratively.