Mother Teresa – Biography
MOTHER TERESA the one
and oly mother who is still living in every good heart as a sign of respect and
love
Mother Teresa was born on August 27, 1910 in Skopje (today the capital of Macedonia) her real name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Her parents were Albanian grocers, and at the time of her birth Skopje lay within the Ottoman Empire. She attended Roman Catholic elementary school in Skopje, and first showed religious interests as a member of a school sodality that focused on state missions. She records that she knew she had a vocation to help the poor. She decided to train for missionary work, and a few years later made India her choice. At the age of eighteen she left the parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns who had a mission in Calcutta India. After a few months' training in Dublin, Darjeeling and Ireland. She was sent to India, where in 1928 she took her initial vows as a nun and her final religious vows in 1937.One of mother Teresa"s first assignments was to teach, and eventually to serve as principal.
From 1929 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1946 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she started an open-air school for homeless children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming from various church organisations, as well as from the municipal authorities. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work, and on October 7, 1950, she received permission to start her own order "The Missionaries of Charity", who’s those persons nobody was prepared to look after. Today the order comprises some one thousand sisters and brothers in India; in 1957 they began to work with lepers and slowly expanded their educational work, at one point running nine elementary school in Calcutta.In 1959 they began to expand outside Calcutta .Starting works in other Indian cities. In 1970 opening works in worldwide .In 1971 she open-end home in Bangladesh for Women raped by Pakistan soldiers. By 1979 her group had more than 200 charity of different need in over 25 Countries.
In 1988 Mother Teresa sent her Missionaries of Charity into
Russia and also opened a
home for AIDS patients in California. In 1991 she
returned home to Albania and opened a home in Tirana, the capital. At this
time, there were 168 homes operating in India.
In the 1980 and 1990 Mother Teresa’s health became a
problem. She suffered a heart attack while visiting Pope John Paul II in 1983.She had a naer fatal heart attack in 1989 and began wearing a pacemaker. In 1996 the world pray for Mother Teresa, at the age of 86,She suffered from Heart failure and malaria. Doctors were not sure for recovery. In September she
said “GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF ME” Again she hospitalised in November she was also
given a mild electric shock to correct an irregular heartbeat. She was released
after spending almost a month in the hospital. In March 1997 63-year-old Sister
Nirmala was named as the new leader of the Missionaries of Charity. Although
Mother Teresa had been trying to cut back on her duties for some time (because
of her health problems), she stayed on in an advisory role to Sister Nirmala, Mother
Teresa celebrated her 87th birthday in August, and died shortly thereafter of a
heart attack on September 5, 1997.
Mother Teresa has fifty relief charities operating in India:
She struggled her whole life fighting for the poor and
needy without any discrimination and partiality.inspite of facing a lot of hardship
in life she never gave up her struggle, she was the saint of slums
who picked up children from dustbin and loved them with kindness more than a Mother
“”
AWARD AND PRIZED POSSESION
1971
- Pope John XXIII Peace Prize
1972
- Nehru Prize for International
peace
1979
- Blazan prize for promoting peace
and brotherhood among Nations
1979
- The Nobel peace prize winner
OWN BOOKS OF MOTHER TERESA
1983
- Life
in the spirit
1995 A Simple Path
1996 In my own words
1997 No Greater love