Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa the 'angel of mercy' dedicated herself to the service of human beings and served god amongst the poorest of the poor, sick and also the dying for over fifty years of her life.

Teresa was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhin on 26th August 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia to Albanian parents. She was the youngest of three children. Exposed early to prayer and repair, she was deeply spiritual. At the age of eighteen, she left home for capital of Ireland, Ireland, to join the Loretto abbey and become a nun of the Roman Catholic church. After her coaching, she was given the name of Sister Theresa. Sisters of Our girl of Loreto, were terribly active in India, doing missionary work. She came to India on January 6, 1929 to become an educator and was rapt at the sight of the halting and helpless folks on the pavements. She taught in St. Mary's convent faculty in metropolis for fifteen years anon became the head.In 1937, she took her final vows as a nun, in Darjeeling.

In 1947, on a journey to Darjeeling later referred by her because the most vital journey of her life she had a vision or decision to depart the convent, to live among the poor and to take care of the sick and the dying, the hungry, the homeless, to be God's Love in action to the poorest of the poor, which was the start of the Missionaries of Charity. At first she didn't get the permission to depart the convent however in 1948 she got the permission specifically from Pope Pius XIII to depart the the Loreto community and work among the city's poor. She left the convent, took basic training in nursing and went to live in the nearby slum. She wore a reasonable and straightforward white dress with a blue border, that became the foremost recognised image of the Sisters of Charity. Following one amongst her former student, others joined her in her mission. In 1948, she opened the first slum school.

As the congregation grew she sought-after approval from the Pope and shifted to 54A Lower Circular Road, thatbecame the Mother House. The Missionaries of charity was formally established as a spiritual congregation for the bishopric of Kolkata in Oct1950. The organisation devoted to the working for the destitute, now have thousands of homes and members all over the country and abroad. Calcutta became the center of her humanitarian activities. Her 1st home was 'Nirmal Hriday' (pure heart) for the sick and therefore the dying, and then ' Shishu Bhavan' for the disabled, orphaned and mentally retarded children, 'Shanti Nagar', a colony for lepers wherever they were cared for, they could learn a skill, build their own houses and could work on their own fields, AIDS hospices and so on. The first home outside Republic of India was based in 1965 in Venezuela. Others were later opened in Italia, Tanzania, Australia, US, Communist Cuba, former Soviet Union etc.

Mother Teresa became an Indian citizen in 1962. She has received several national and international awards in recognition of her noble work for humanity.

The first award being Padmashri for distinguished service (1962), then the Magsaysay Award the same year, Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971), Good Samaritan Award (1971), John . F. Kennedy International Award (1971), Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International peace (1972), Nobel Peace Prize (1979), Bharat Ratna (1980), Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award (1993) etc. were some of them.

In 1983, at the age of seventy two, Mother was diagnosed with a serious heart condition and her health steadily worsened.

In 1990, Mother had decided to step down as the head due to her failing health and so called a conclave of sisters to choose a successor. But in a secret ballot, she was re-elected with one dissenting vote, that was her own. In 1991 she underwent heart surgery and in March 1997, Sister Nirmala a former Hindu converted to Roman Catholic was elected to succeed Mother Teresa as leader of Missionaries of Charity.

On Sep five, 1997 the 87-year old mother died of severe cardiac arrest at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata.

The late mother schooled the globe the wonder in giving and left behind a colossal organisation with the need to continue her work.

Mother was blessed by Pope John Paul II at St.

Peters sq. in residence, on October 19th 2003, seven years after her death.

Henceforth the mother are going to be brought up because the The Blessed Theresa of Kolkata