Mother Teresa of Calcutta (August 27, 1910 – September 5, 1997) was a world famous Catholic nun and founder of the Missionaries of Charity whose work among the poor of Calcutta was widely reported. She was awarded the Templeton Prize in 1973, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in October 2003, hence she may be properly called Blessed Teresa by Catholics.

Early life and work


Teresa was born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Uskub, a town in the Ottoman province of Kosovo (now Skopje in the Republic of Macedonia), where her father was a successful contractor. Her parents had three children, and Teresa was the youngest.
The family was ethnically Albanian. Her parents, Nikolla and Dranafila Bojaxhiu, were Catholic, though the majority of their native Albania is Muslim, with a large Orthodox Christian minority and a smaller Catholic one.
Mother Teresa
Little is known of Teresa’s early life except from her own reminiscences. She recounted that she felt a vocation to help the poor from the age of 12, and decided to train for missionary work in India.
In September 1946, by her own account, she received a calling from God “to serve him among the poorest of the poor.”
In 1948 she received permission from Pope Pius XII, via the Archbishop of Calcutta, to leave her community and live as an independent nun.

Foundation of the Missionaries of Charity


In October 1950 Teresa received Vatican permission to start her own order, which the Vatican originally labeled as the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, but which later became known as the Missionaries of Charity, whose mission was to care for (in her own words) “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.”
With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. Soon after she opened another hospice, Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a home for lepers called Shanti Nagar (City of Peace), and an orphanage.


International fame


Mother Teresa’s work inspired other Catholics to affiliate themselves with her order. 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. In answer to the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests. By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa had become an international celebrity. Her fame can be in large part attributed to the 1969 documentary Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge and his 1971 book of the same title, which is still in print. During the filming of the documentary footage taken in poor lighting conditions, particularly the Home for the Dying, was thought unlikely to be of usable quality by the crew. When, after returning from India, the footage was found to be extremely well lit. Muggeridge claimed this was ‘divine light’ from Mother Teresa herself. Others in the crew thought it more likely ascribable to a new type of Kodak film. Muggeridge later converted to Catholicism.
In 1971 Paul VI awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. Other awards bestowed upon her included a Kennedy Prize (1971), the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975), the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985) and the Congressional Gold Medal (1994), honorary citizenship of the United States (November 16, 1996), and honorary degrees from a number of universities. In 1972 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding.
In 1979 Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, “for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitute a threat to peace.”


Deteriorating health and death
In 1983 Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome, while visiting Pope John Paul II. After a second attack in 1989 she received a pacemaker. In 1991, after a bout of pneumonia while in Mexico, she had further heart problems. In 1991, returning to her home country, she opened a home in Tirana, Albania. She offered to resign her position as head of the order. A secret ballot vote was carried out, and all the nuns, except herself, voted for Mother Teresa to stay. Mother Teresa agreed to continue her work as head of the Missionaries of Charity.
In April, 1997, Mother Teresa fell and broke her collarbone. Later that year, in August, she suffered from malaria, and failure of the left heart ventricle. She underwent heart surgery, but it was clear that her health was declining. On March 13, 1997, she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity and died in September 1997 at the age of 87.
At the time of her death, Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters, an associated brotherhood of 300 members, and over 100,000 lay volunteers, operating 610 missions in 123 countries. These included hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children’s and family counseling programs, orphanages and schools.
Her life-long devotion to the care of the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to humanity.”




Motivation of charitable activities
Christopher Hitchens described Mother Teresa’s organization as a cult which promoted suffering and did not help those in need. Hitchens said that Teresa’s own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people. He quoted Teresa’s words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: “Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?” She replied: “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”
Chatterjee added that the public image of Mother Teresa as a “helper of the poor” was misleading, and that only a few hundred people are served by even the largest of the homes. According to a Stern magazine report about Mother Teresa, the (Protestant) Assembly of God charity serves 18,000 meals daily in Calcutta, many more than all the Mission of Charity homes together.
Chatterjee alleged that many operations of the order engage in no charitable activity at all but instead use their funds for missionary work. He stated, for example, that none of the eight facilities that the Missionaries of Charity run in Papua New Guinea have any residents in them, being purely for the purpose of converting local people to Catholicism.
Mother Teresa and her possible defenders apparently did not feel a need to directly answer most of these allegations. Some defenders of the order argue that missionary activity was the central part of Teresa’s calling.








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