Her Life
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on August 26th in 1910 and baptized the next day on August 27th in Skopje, Macedonia. Her family was one of the few Catholics in the Albanian community to which they belonged. The majority of the Albanians were Muslims. Agnes’ father was a businessman. He traveled a lot and was multi-lingual. He, Kole taught Agnes her first lessons in charity together with his wife Drana. In 1919 after her husband died, Drana had to raise her three children, Aga, Lazar and Gonxha alone.

They prayed every evening, went to church every day, prayed the rosary every day in May and assisted the service of the Holy Virgin. A lot of attention went also went to the poor and needy who came to knock on their door. Agnes enjoyed being in church and liked to read, pray and sing. Agnes later went to the Lyceum, a commercial school. She studied well and together with Aga, she was in choir, a soprano.

Most of her time was taken up by going to the legion of Mary. She helped a father there who wasn’t very familiar with the language, to teach catechism and read a lot about Slovenian and Croatian missionaries in India. At the age of twelve Agnes felt for the first time, the urge to spend her life for god’s work, to give to him and to let him decide. When she told the father about this he responded by telling her “ The deep inner joy that you feel is the compass that indicates your direction in life.”

At 18, the decision was made. For two years she had assisted several religious retreats in Lentice and she was sure that she would be a missionary for India. On Assumption Day in 1928 she went to pray before leaving She was going to join our Lady Of Loreto, who were very active in India.

First she went to an abbey close to Dublin where the main house of the Loreto sisters was. There, Gonxha learned to speak English and was trained in religious life. She received the clothes of a sister and chose the name of Sister Teresa. The journey continued on and she finally reached Darjeeling in early 1929. There the young sister accomplished her training. On the 23rd of May, Sister Teresa was accepted as a novice and two years later, made her first vows. Immediately she was sent to Bengali to help the sisters in a little hospital, which cared for the sick, starving and helpless mothers.

Sister Teresa then went to Calcutta so she could study to become a teacher. When she finished her studies she was named to be teacher. On May 24th 1947, she made her final vows in Darjeeling and became the headmaster of a secondary school for middle classed Bengali girls in the center if Calcutta. Close to the school was a slum. Sister Teresa could not take her eyes of it and always worried about who took care of these poor people. Her mother’s letters reminded her of the basic call: To care for the poor. The Belgian Walloon Jesuit, Father Henry, a spiritual director, was a great inspiration. He directed Sister Teresa for years and under his inspiration her desire to do more for the poor grew.
She then left for retreat to Darjeeling on the 10th of September and this turned out to be the most important journey of her life. It was then that she heard gods call. His message was clear: She had to take care of the sick, dying, naked, and the homeless and to live with them; to help the poorest of the poor. It was an order, a duty, an absolute certainty.

In August 1948, Sister Teresa got permission to leave the Loreto community under the condition to keep the vows of poverty, purity and obedience. When she turned 38, she left the religious Loreto robe and exchanged it with a cheap blue and white sari. To help the sick and poor in their dirty habitat, she needed to know how to know how to prevent and cure and for that she took medical training.

Back in Calcutta, Sister Teresa would go into slums and streets, talk to the people and help them. She helped wash babies, clean wounds and also started to teach the poor children how to read and write, how to wash and have some hygiene. At noon everyday, the children would receive a cup of milk and a piece of soap and they would hear about god, who is love and who, contrarily to their obvious reality, loves them.

On the 19th of March 1949 one of Sister Teresa’s former student’s was the first to join Sister Teresa and took her girls name: Agnes. Other girls followed. In May there were three, In November five, the next year, seven. Sister Teresa was then offered the top floor of a Ministers house for her first community. In that year, Sister Teresa took the Indian Nationality. As the number of poor and sick that asked for help kept increasing, finding a suitable house to accept the increasing number of Sisters was a real necessity. A Muslim leaving town then sold his house for a cheap price and this became the famous mother house.

Mother Teresa went all over the world to help people, rescue children, advise her sisters; to organize and talk. More and more she was asked to address words to groups of sometimes ordinary or sometimes very exquisite crowds. Inspite of her age, she continued to search means to help the poor people all over the world.

Mother Teresa suffered from a heart problems and in 1996 she suffered from malaria and was treated for chest infections. Finally on September 5th 1997 at around 9:30 p.m., Mother Teresa went to heaven. Totally worn out as she had given herself whole heartedly, freely, and unconditionally to the service of the poorest of the poor, for the love of Jesus.

Her Work
“We are not social workers or social assistants. We want to bring the joy and love of God to the people, we want to bring them God himself, who gives them his love through us. At the same time we love god and show him our love by serving him in this people. There are a lot of institutions caring for sick. We do not want to be one among them. WE are not one or another organization of social service. And the poor people have thought us what it really means to love and to serve god- although our full understanding will only come after we died.”
Mother Teresa

Nirmal Hriday
One of the first foundations of Mother Teresa is the Home for the Dying in Calcutta. More then 40,000 people were taken from the streets of Calcutta to the Nirmal Hriday. Half of them died in a kind surrounding. In their last hours they met with human and divine love. Those who didn’t die were found jobs or sent to homes where they would continue living in homely surroundings. The sisters would pick up dying from the streets and bring them to the house when there was no other place they could go. They would be washed, dressed and put into bed with the proper medical care.

Shishu Bhavan
Shishu Bhavan, the Home for Babies was another early foundation. Most babies were picked up from streets while others were brought to the home by hospitals, where they had been left behind by their parents. Some would come from policemen and even from prisons.
“ No matter how they come here, we never refused a child till now”- Mother Teresa

Shanti Nagar
India has a great number of lepers. Being a leper is far from enviable in India and in many other countries around the world. They are banned from society, even if they are rich or educated, they loose family, friends and work and later they have to stoop so low that they have to beg for food. They have to live and die like animals. Mother Teresa tried to explain to the world about this disease but she was met with a wall of cold neglection. Even then, she started to make small villages where the lepers could live and work in peace and be cared for. In this settlement, called Shanti Nagar, the sick could make their own clothes and medical cloth for their wounds and bags of medicine.

Battle against abortion
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 she said: “ This is the worst evil in the world”. With all the moral authority Mother Teresa earned through the 87 years of her life, she defends the right to a valuable life for every human being, especially the unborn.

Aids
In the 80’s, many of the people with aids were left aside in hospitals or became unwanted. She showed the great love of the one and opened homes for Aids patients all over the world.

Growth
The sisters are now very active all over India and the rest of the world. From the United States to Russia, from Italy to Tanzania. Mother Teresa opened a house for alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless and destitutes in Rome, Russia, Poland, Croatia and many other countries.

Mother Teresa is an important figure as she led her life of ministry and care, for the sick, hungry and orphaned. She gave hope, faith and comfort to all the lives she touched. She also believed in helping the poorest of the poor, whom everyone discarded and disregarded. She did so much, for so many, with so little and showed that love can cure what medicine cannot.

“ It’s not how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing. It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into the giving”. - Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa

Her Life and work