Mother Teresa Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

Mother Teresa

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

Nationality: Albanian, Indian

Born 

August 26, 1910
Üsküb, Vilayet of Kosovo, Ottoman Empire (today's Skopje)

Died September 5, 1997 (aged 87)
Calcutta, India

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. At  mere age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ and left home at eighteen to serve the Almighty and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. She dedicated every day of her adult life caring for "The dying, the cripple, the mentally ill, the unwanted, the unloved" and she loved every minute of it because she was loving, she was cleaning, feeding "Jesus in disguise".

Selfless Service
From 1931 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 1948 she received permission to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.

Without any funds she started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.
Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.