Mother Teresa was the
founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic
congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor. Considered one of the
greatest humanitarians of the 20th century, she was canonized as Saint Teresa
of Calcutta in 2016.
Early Life
Catholic nun and
missionary Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, the current
capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The following day, she was baptized as
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Her parents, Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, were of
Albanian descent; her father was an entrepreneur who worked as a construction
contractor and a trader of medicines and other goods. The Bojaxhius were a
devoutly Catholic family, and Nikola was deeply involved in the local church as
well as in city politics as a vocal proponent of Albanian independence.
In 1919, when Agnes was
only 8 years old, her father suddenly fell ill and died. While the cause of his
death remains unknown, many have speculated that political enemies poisoned
him. In the aftermath of her father's death, Agnes became extraordinarily close
to her mother, a pious and compassionate woman who instilled in her daughter a
deep commitment to charity.
Although by no means
wealthy, Drana Bojaxhiu extended an open invitation to the city's destitute to
dine with her family. "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you
are sharing it with others," she counseled her daughter. When Agnes asked
who the people eating with them were, her mother uniformly responded,
"Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people."
Agnes attended a
convent-run primary school and then a state-run secondary school. As a girl,
she sang in the local Sacred Heart choir and was often asked to sing solos. The
congregation made an annual pilgrimage to the Church of the Black Madonna in
Letnice, and it was on one such trip at the age of 12 that she first felt a
calling to a religious life. Six years later, in 1928, an 18-year-old Agnes
Bojaxhiu decided to become a nun and set off for Ireland to join the Sisters of
Loreto in Dublin. It was there that she took the name Sister Mary
Teresa after
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. A year later, Sister Mary
Teresa traveled on to Darjeeling, India, for the novitiate period; in May 1931,
she made her First Profession of Vows. Afterward she was sent to Calcutta,
where she was assigned to teach at Saint Mary's High School for Girls, a school
run by the Loreto Sisters and dedicated to teaching girls from the city's
poorest Bengali families. Sister Teresa learned to speak both Bengali and Hindi
fluently as she taught geography and history and dedicated herself to
alleviating the girls' poverty through education.
Mother Teresa's 'Call
Within a Call'.
However, on September 10,
1946, Mother Teresa experienced a second calling, the "call within a
call" that would forever transform her life. She was riding in a train
from Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills for a retreat when she said Christ
spoke to her and told her to abandon teaching to work in the slums of Calcutta
aiding the city's poorest and sickest people.
But since Mother Teresa
had taken a vow of obedience, she could not leave her convent without official
permission. After nearly a year and a half of lobbying, in January 1948 she
finally received approval to pursue this new calling. That August, donning the
blue-and-white sari that she would wear in public for the rest of her life, she
left the Loreto convent and wandered out into the city. After six months of
basic medical training, she voyaged for the first time into Calcutta's slums
with no more specific a goal than to aid "the unwanted, the unloved, the
uncared for."
The
Missionaries of Charity
Mother Teresa quickly
translated this somewhat vague calling into concrete actions to help the city's
poor. She began an open-air school and established a home for the dying
destitute in a dilapidated building she convinced the city government to donate
to her cause. In October 1950, she won canonical recognition for a new
congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only a
handful of members—most of them former teachers or pupils from St. Mary's
School.
As the ranks of her
congregation swelled and donations poured in from around India and across the
globe, the scope of Mother Teresa's charitable activities expanded
exponentially. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, she established a leper
colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile
health clinics.
In 1971, Mother Teresa
traveled to New York City to open her first American-based house of charity,
and in the summer of 1982, she secretly went to Beirut, Lebanon, where she
crossed between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut to aid children of
both faiths. In 1985, Mother Teresa returned to New York and spoke at the 40th
anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly. While there, she also
opened Gift of Love, a home to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS.
International
Charity and Recognition
In February 1965, Pope
Paul VI bestowed the Decree of Praise upon the Missionaries of Charity, which
prompted Mother Teresa to begin expanding internationally. By the time of her
death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered more than 4,000—in addition
to thousands more lay volunteers—with 610 foundations in 123 countries around
the world.
The Decree of Praise was
just the beginning, as Mother Teresa received various honors for her tireless
and effective charity. She was awarded the Jewel of India, the highest honor
bestowed on Indian civilians, as well as the now-defunct Soviet Union's Gold
Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work "in bringing help to
suffering humanity."
Controversy
Despite this widespread
praise, Mother Teresa's life and work have not gone without its controversies.
In particular, she has drawn criticism for her vocal endorsement of some of the
Catholic Church's more controversial doctrines, such as opposition to
contraception and abortion. "I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today
is abortion," Mother Teresa said in her 1979 Nobel lecture.
In 1995, she publicly
advocated a "no" vote in the Irish referendum to end the country's
constitutional ban on divorce and remarriage. The most scathing criticism of
Mother Teresa can be found in Christopher Hitchens's book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa
in Theory and Practice, in which Hitchens argued that Mother Teresa
glorified poverty for her own ends and provided a justification for the
preservation of institutions and beliefs that sustained widespread poverty.
Death
and Sainthood
After several years of
deteriorating health, in which she suffered from heart, lung and kidney
problems, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. In 2002,
the Vatican recognized a miracle involving an Indian woman
named Monica Besra, who said she was cured of an abdominal tumor through
Mother Teresa's intercession on the one year anniversary of her death in
1998. She was beatified as "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta" on October
19, 2003 in a ceremony led by pope john paul II.
Since her death, Mother
Teresa has remained in the public spotlight. In particular, the publication of
her private correspondence in 2003 caused a wholesale re-evaluation of her life
by revealing the crisis of faith she suffered for most of the last 50 years of
her life.
In one despairing letter
to a confidant, she wrote, "Where is my Faith—even deep down right in
there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this
unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not utter the words & thoughts that
crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony." While such
revelations are shocking considering her public image, they have also made
Mother Teresa a more relatable and human figure to all those who experience
doubt in their beliefs.
For her unwavering
commitment to aiding those most in need, Mother Teresa stands out as one of the
greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. She combined profound empathy and a
fervent commitment to her cause with incredible organizational and managerial
skills that allowed her to develop a vast and effective international
organization of missionaries to help impoverished citizens all across the globe.
However, despite the
enormous scale of her charitable activities and the millions of lives she
touched, to her dying day she held only the most humble conception of her own
achievements. Summing up her life in characteristically self-effacing fashion,
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."
On December 17, 2015, Pope
Francis issued a decree that recognized a second miracle attributed to
Mother Teresa, clearing the way for her to be canonized as a saint of the Roman
Catholic Church. The second miracle involved the healing of Marcilio Andrino, a
Brazilian man who was diagnosed with a viral brain infection and lapsed into a
coma. His wife, family and friends prayed to Mother Teresa, and when the man
was brought to the operating room for emergency surgery, he woke up without
pain and was cured of his symptoms, according to a statement from the
Missionaries of Charity Father.
Mother Teresa was
canonized as a saint on September 4, 2016, a day before the 19th
anniversary of her death. Pope Francis led the canonization Mass, which
was held in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
Tens of thousands of
Catholics and pilgrims from around the world attended the canonization to
celebrate the woman who had been called “the saint of the gutters” during her
lifetime because of her charitable work with the poor.
“After due deliberation
and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of
many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
to be a saint, and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be
venerated as such by the whole church,” Pope Francis said in Latin.
The Pope spoke about
Mother Teresa’s life of service in the homily. ”Mother Teresa, in all aspects
of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available
for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and
those abandoned and discarded," he said. "She bowed down before those
who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their
God-given dignity. She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so
that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created."
He also told the faithful
to follow her example and practice compassion. “Mercy was the salt which gave
flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many
who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering,” he said,
adding. "May she be your model of holiness."
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