Early life and family Mother Teresa's given name was Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha) Bojaxhiu ( is a cognate of
Agnes; means "flower bud" in
Albanian). She was born on 26 August 1910 into a
Kosovar Albanian family in
Skopje, Ottoman Empire (now the capital of
North Macedonia). She was baptised in Skopje the day after her birth. She was the youngest child of
Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai). Her father, who was involved in
Albanian-community politics in
Ottoman Macedonia, was probably poisoned, an act attributed to
Serbian agents, after he had visited
Belgrade for a political meeting in 1919 when she was eight years old. Her mother may have been from a village near
Gjakova, believed by her offspring to be
Bishtazhin. in her native SkopjeAccording to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, Anjezë was in her early years when she became fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in
Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life. Her resolve strengthened on 15 August 1928 as she prayed at the shrine of the
Black Madonna of
Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimages. Anjezë left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the
Sisters of Loreto at
Loreto Abbey in
Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English with the intent of becoming a missionary; English was the language of instruction of the Sisters of Loreto in India. She saw neither her mother nor her sister again. Her family lived in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to
Tirana. During communist leader
Enver Hoxha's rule, she was considered a dangerous agent of the Vatican. Despite multiple requests and despite the fact that many countries made requests on her behalf, she was denied a chance to see her family and was not granted the opportunity to see her mother and sister. Both of them died during Hoxha's rule, and Anjezë herself was only able to visit Albania five years after the
communist regime collapsed.Dear God, I can understand and accept that I should suffer, but it is so hard to understand and accept why my mother has to suffer. In her old age she has no other wish than to see us one last time.She arrived in India in 1929 and began her novitiate in
Darjeeling, in the lower
Himalayas, where she learned
Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent. She took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after
Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries; because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, she opted for its Spanish spelling of Teresa. Teresa took her
solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while she was a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta, taking the style of 'Mother' as part of Loreto custom. She served there for nearly twenty years and was appointed its headmistress in 1944. Although Mother Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. The
Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city, and the August 1946
Direct Action Day began a period of Muslim-Hindu violence. In 1946, during a visit to Darjeeling by train, Mother Teresa felt that she heard the call of her inner conscience to serve the poor of India for Jesus. She asked for and received permission to leave the school. In 1950, she founded the
Missionaries of Charity, choosing a white sari with two blue borders as the order's habit.
Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta On 10 September 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" when she travelled by train to the
Loreto convent in Darjeeling from
Calcutta for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."
Joseph Langford, MC, founder of her congregation of priests, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, later wrote, "Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become
Mother Teresa". She began missionary work with the poor in 1948, She founded a school in Motijhil, Calcutta, before she began tending to the poor and hungry. Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister. Mother Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulty. With no income, she begged for food and supplies and experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months: On 7 October 1950, Mother Teresa received
Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity. In her words, it would care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, 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". In 1952, Mother Teresa opened her first hospice with help from Calcutta officials. She converted an abandoned
Hindu temple into the
Kalighat Home for the Dying, free for the poor, and renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and the opportunity to
die with dignity in accordance with their faith: Muslims were to read the
Quran, Hindus received water from the
Ganges, and Catholics received
extreme unction. "A beautiful death", Mother Teresa said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted." The Missionaries of Charity established leprosy-outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication,
dressings and food. The Missionaries of Charity took in an increasing number of homeless children; in 1955, Mother Teresa opened Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth. The congregation began to attract recruits and donations, and by the 1960s it had opened hospices, orphanages and
leper houses throughout India. Mother Teresa then expanded the congregation abroad, opening a house in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Houses followed in Italy (Rome), Tanzania and Austria in 1968, and, during the 1970s, the congregation opened houses and foundations in the United States and dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a
contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. Responding to requests by many priests, in 1981, Mother Teresa founded the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests and with
Joseph Langford founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984 to combine the vocational aims of the Missionaries of Charity with the resources of the priesthood. By 1997, the 13-member Calcutta congregation had grown to more than 4,000 sisters who managed orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres worldwide, caring for refugees, the blind, the disabled, the aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine. By 2007, the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 450 brothers and 5,000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.
International charity Mother Teresa said, "By blood, I am
Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus." Fluent in five languages – Bengali,
Albanian,
Serbo-Croatian, English and
Hindi – she made occasional trips outside India for humanitarian reasons. These included, in 1971, a visit with four of her sisters, to
Troubles-era
Belfast. Her suggestion that the conditions she had found justified an ongoing mission was the cause of some embarrassment. Reportedly under pressure from senior clergy, who believed "the missionary traffic should be in other direction", and despite local welcome and support, she and her sisters abruptly left the city in 1973. At the height of the
Siege of Beirut in 1982, Mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the
Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by
Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the hospital to evacuate the young patients. When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the late 1980s, Mother Teresa expanded her efforts to Communist countries which had rejected the Missionaries of Charity. She began dozens of projects, undeterred by criticism of her stands against abortion and divorce: "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work". She visited
Armenia after the
1988 earthquake and met with
Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov. Mother Teresa travelled to assist the hungry in Ethiopia, radiation victims at
Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia. In 1991 she returned to
Albania for the first time, opening a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in
Tirana. By 1996, the Missionaries of Charity operated 517 missions in over 100 countries. The number of sisters in the Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands, serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centres worldwide. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the
South Bronx area of
New York City, and by 1984 the congregation operated 19 establishments throughout the country.
Declining health and death Mother Teresa had a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while she was visiting
Pope John Paul II. Following a second attack in 1989, she received a
pacemaker. In 1991, after a bout of
pneumonia in Mexico, she had additional heart problems. Although Mother Teresa offered to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity, in a
secret ballot the sisters of the congregation voted for her to stay, and she agreed to continue. In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell, breaking her
collarbone, and four months later she had
malaria and
heart failure. Although she underwent
heart surgery, her health was clearly declining. According to the Archbishop of Calcutta
Henry Sebastian D'Souza, he ordered a priest to perform an
exorcism (with her permission) when she was first hospitalised with cardiac problems because he thought she might be under attack by
the devil. On 13 March 1997, Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September.
Reactions Mother Teresa
lay in repose in an open casket in
St Thomas, Calcutta, for a week before her funeral. She received a
state funeral from the Indian government in gratitude for her service to the poor of all religions in the country.
Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, the Pope's representative, delivered the homily at the service. Mother Teresa's death was mourned in the secular and religious communities.
Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif called her "a rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes. Her lifelong devotion to the care of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to our humanity." According to former
U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, "She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world." ==Recognition and reception==