MOTHER TERESA
Mother Teresa was born as Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu on August 27, 1910, in Shkup (Skopje), present day Macedonia, which at the time was the center of the Kosova vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire. Her parents, Nikollë and Dranafille Bojaxhiu had moved there from Shkodra, in present day Albania, before Gonxhe was born. According to some sources, Dranafille was from Novosellë, a village near Gjakova, and Nikollë from Prizren.
Lorenc Antoni, a well-known composer from Prizren and a childhood friend of Gonxhe, said that in 1928, while returning from the Catholic Church of Letnica, in Vitia, Kosova, she told him that "I have decided before the Lady of Letnica to go in missions and to dedicate myself completely to God and to serving souls." Soon after, at age 18, she joined the Irish Catholic order of the Sisters of Loreto, which operated missions in Bengal. After spending some time in Ireland, she was sent to Calcutta, where she taught geography, history and catechism, at St. Mary's High School just outside of Calcutta. She later became principal of the school, and mastered Hindi and Bengali.
In 1930 she was given the name Teresa, in honor of St. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish saint of the 16th century.
On September 10th, 1946, while travelling on a train to be treated for tuberculosis, she received her "call within a call," as she called it, to help the poorest. She left St. Mary's High School and began working in the slums of Calcutta among the poor.
In 1950 she founded her order, the Missionaries of Charity, whose work, as she defined it, was to provide "free service to the poor and the unwanted, irrespective of caste, creed, nationality or race." In 1952 she established a home for the dying destitute, and soon after she opened her first orphanage.
In 1962 she received the Pandra Shri prize for "extraordinary services." Over the years she had used the money obtained from such awards to set up mobile health clinics, centers for the malnourished, rehabilitation hospices for lepers, homes for alcoholics and drug addicts, and shelters for the homeless. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize, "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitute a threat to peace." After being told of the honor, she replied, "I am unworthy." By this time her order had grown to 1,800 nuns and 120,000 lay workers, who operated nearly 200 centers and homes.
She intervened between the warring factions in Beirut in 1982, and arranged a cease fire to rescue nearly 40 mentally ill children.
Being prevented from visiting Albania by the communist regime, she visited several times during recent years. In 1988, she went to visit her mother's and sister's graves in Shkodra. Her last visit was in 1993, when on April 25th, she attended the inauguration ceremony of the Great Cathedral in Shkodra, alongside Pope John Paul II. She visited Kosova in 1980. Eight of her charity houses operate in Albania and two in Kosova. The largest charity organization in Kosova carries her name.
She was hospitalized several times in 1996 with heart, lung, kidney and other problems, and suffered ill health in earlier years. She indicated her intention to resign as head of her order in 1990, due to failing health. Because of disagreements on her successor, she remained as head of the order until March, 1996, when she stepped down and was replaced by Sister Nermala. She died on September 5th, 1997, in Calcutta, India, after suffering cardiac arrest. She was 87.
Her order currently has 4,000 nuns and novices, 400 priests and brothers and hundreds of thousands of volunteers, working at over 450 sites around the world.