Mother Teresa Mother Teresa was a wonderful woman and a great influence on the world today. She was born in 1910 in Macedonia with the name Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. She was born into a family of deeply religious Catholics. Agnes felt she got the calling to work for God at the young age of fourteen. She joined the Loreto order and went to Bengal, India, to start her studies.
In 1937, Agnes took her final vows to become a nun and has done much great work in the world since. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on August 27, 1910 to Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia. Drana and Nikola were Albanian and both were very deeply religious Roman Catholics. Nikola was a popular merchant and a partner to an Italian merchant. He owned several houses and was a member of the Skopje town council.
Whenever Agnes’ father would return from a trip, he would always bring his children presents. Also, he promoted his daughters’ education, which was uncommon in that time period. Nikola also was involved in an underground organization that worked to gain independence for the Albanians from the Ottoman Turks, who ruled Macedonia around the time Agnes was born. Agnes grew up around much fighting.
When she was born, there were Albanian protests against the Turkish government. When she was two, she witnessed the First Balkan War. In that war, the Ottomans were defeated, but Macedonia was divided among the conquerors: Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegero, and Serbia. The city of Skopje was distributed to Serbia.
Albania received its independence in 1912, but Nikola continued his nationalist work. He joined a movement determined to incorporate Serbia into the Albanian nation. In 1914, when Agnes was only four years old, World War I began. In 1918, her father was killed. Some people believe that he was poisoned by enemies. Many people mourned his death because of his kindness and generosity.
Drana Bojaxhiu and the family were left with little money and no means of income. Drana worked hard to provide for her family. To get enough money, she became a dressmaker. Even though she had to work extra hard to make ends meet, Drana still found time and money to give to the lonely. When Agnes was young, she used to go on trips with her mother to visit the elderly, sick, and the poor.
It is said that their mother’s generosity may have had the greatest influence on Agnes, her sister, and her brother. Agnes was the youngest of the three children. Her older brother was named Lazar and her older sister was Aga. Aga was five years older than Agnes. Agnes loved reading books, saying prayers, and thinking. She also liked to sing and write poems about her faith.
Agnes learned her faith from her mother. There was a sign in the front room of their house that read: In this house, no one must speak against another. Drana passed down to her children many values. She believed that the Lord’s work was reward enough in itself and that you should serve God in a practical, helpful way. Agnes had thought about being a teacher when she was younger, but at the age of twelve, she knew she wanted to lead a religious life.
When Agnes was only fourteen, she knew she wanted to be a missionary nun. At age eighteen, Agnes joined the Loreto order of nuns. In September of 1928, she left her family and everything she knew to serve God at the Loreto Abbey in Dublin Ireland. There, she learned how to speak English. In November, she went to India to teach English in an Indian school.
In 1929, Agnes started her novitiate in an Abbey in Darjeeling, and abbey in the foothills of the Himalayas. A novitiate is the time a nun spends studying, praying, and contemplating before she takes her vows. On May 24, 1931, Agnes took her first vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She took her name after St. Therese, the patron saint of missionaries.
On May 14, 1937, Teresa took her final vows, promising to serve God for the rest of her life. Teresa eventually became the principal of Loreto Entally, a school in Entally (a district of Calcutta) where she taught history and geography. Everyday, Teresa would look out of the convent to the streets of Calcutta. She longed to help the starving and dying people on the streets. She wasn’t allowed to because the Loreto order of nuns had a rule that the nuns couldn’t leave the convent unless they were seriously ill. In August, 1946, Sister Teresa could stand it no longer.
A four-day riot broke out in Calcutta between the Muslims and the Hindus. Because of this, food delivery was stopped. Sister Teresa went out to find food for her hundreds of students. In the riot, 5000 Calcuttans were killed and an additional 15000 were injured. She met some soldiers who gave her some bags of food. They warned her to stay off the streets, but she would soon experience another call from God.
On September 10, 1946, Sister Teresa experienced a call within a call on an annual retreat. She was convinced that God wanted her to reach out to the poor. She said, I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order.
To fail it would have been to break the faith. In 1947, Sister Teresa was granted permission to leave the Loreto order of nuns. On August 16, 1948, Sister Teresa set out on the dirty streets of Calcutta wearing a simple cotton sari decorated with a blue border. Eventually, her organization would adopt this outfit as their habit. Leaving the Loreto Abbey was very hard for Sister Teresa.
She says that that was one of the greatest sacrifices she had ever made. The sisters at the Abbey were her only friends and companions and she was leaving them all behind. Before she went out to the slums of Calcutta, she went to Patna, a city 250 miles from Calcutta, to learn medical skills from Mother Anna Dengel. In Patna, the Medical Missionary Sisters took Sister Teresa in immediately and took her with them when they went to the houses of sick and dying people and local hospitals. Sister Teresa learned to care for people by practicing with the sisters. In Patna, Sister Teresa learned how to deliver babies, fix broken bones, and she became aware of many common diseases and illnesses.
The sisters found that she was a natural at caring for people, and within three months, Sister Teresa set out to help the poor of Calcutta. In Calcutta, she got in touch will Father Van Exem, who would help her find a place to stay. Father arranged for Sister Teresa to stay at St. Joseph’s Home, where a group of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor welcomed her gladly. It was hard for Sister Teresa to know where to start helping in such a large city as Calcutta. She began by helping the Little Sisters of the Poor work with elderly people.
On December 21, 1948, Sister Teresa finally set out on the streets of Calcutta to start her mission from God. She walked out into the city with a packed lunch, but nothing else. She had no money, materials, or companions. The first place Sister Teresa decided to go was the slum that she could see from outside her window while teaching in the Loreto convent called Motijhil. She decided to start a school there. On the first day, five children showed up for class.
There were no desks, books, or chalkboards, but Sister Teresa still managed to teach. She started by teaching the alphabet. Soon, the number of students was almost forty. With Sister Teresa’s help, the students learned not only about language and numbers, but also they learned about personal hygiene and cleanliness. Through her students, Sister Teresa met many families of Calcutta and also learned about the poor amount of medical care.
Many of these families had no income because the man of the house had been stricken with disease. In Calcutta, thousands of people died each year because they weren’t able to get medical care. The amount of poverty in Calcutta grew, and Sister Teresa knew she had to do something more. Since she did not have any money, Sister Teresa gave herself and all of her attention and energy to the poor.
She walked around the streets each day looking for places she could help. The work would exhaust her, but each day she kept on going. Sister Teresa had such a love and a compassion for God, people, and her work that she would help even the people who nobody else would go near. She was tempted each night to go back to the easy life at Loreto, but she prayed to God for help to get through it all. In March 1949, Sister Teresa received a visitor at St. Joseph’s.
It was one of her students from Entally. She had come because she could not forget her kind and generous teacher and principle, and wanted to join Sister Teresa and work for the poor of Calcutta. Soon after, Magdalena Gomes came to Sister Teresa to help too. The three of them would go out onto the streets of Calcutta each day, not knowing what to expect.
By the end of that year, eight other young girls had joined Sister Teresa to help fight against poverty. Also in 1949, Sister Teresa decided to become an Indian citizen, demonstrating her dedication to Calcutta’s poor. On October 7, 1950, Cardinal Pietro Fumosoni-Biondi, head of the office for the Propagation of the Faith, sanctioned Sister Teresa’s order, making her Mother Teresa. The new order was called the Missionaries of Charity.
It grew steadily in number, while helping the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa encouraged all of the nuns to treat all of the poor like a gift from God. She made sure that they always treated the patients with respect, warmth, and kindness. By the middle of 1953, the Missionaries of Charities moved to a new residence that was big enough to house the growing number of nuns joining. Mother Teresa refused to have the name Reverend Mother Teresa because she would never set herself above anyone else.
In 1954, Mother Teresa was given an unused building where she could help the dying of Calcutta. The old building was transformed into the Place of the Immaculate Heart. The building could hold 120 people at one time. This building was made a place where the terminally ill could go to die in dignity, instead of out on the streets. Each morning, Mother Teresa and the nuns would search the streets for dying people.
The people were treated as angels and were loved and cared for until their death and ever after. When a woman with children died, as happened often, the sisters would take care of the children. Often on their morning walks, the nuns would find abandoned babies. They also took them in and cared for them. In 1955, Mother Teresa opened up the Children’s Home of the Immaculate Heart. It was a two-story building that gave shelter to children with no place to go.
The sisters helped care for malnourished and dying babies as well as relatively healthy ones. In addition to housing many dying children, the Missionaries of Charity set up a food bank for the hungry of Calcutta. The Children’s Home of the Immaculate Heart also became a place where teen-age girls to go who had lost their families’ support and may have turned to prostitution. The girls often helped out by taking care of the children. The young teens were taught useful skills such as sewing and typing so they would be able to support themselves.
Mother Teresa received much criticism for wasting money on the dead and the dying, but she still kept on with her work. Mother Teresa not only had a compassion for he poor and dying, but also for the victims of leprosy. In 1957, about 30,000 lepers lived in Calcutta. Most of them were cast out from society and even their families. They were unable to find an employer who would hire them.
Mother Teresa found yet another group of people that needed compassion, the lepers, and she was willing to give it. She was determined to find medical care for them. The Missionaries of Charity set up many clinics where people could go to get medicine, disinfectant, bandages, and other necessary supplies. The sisters opened up a rehabilitation clinic for the lepers. One of Mother Teresa’s biggest achievements for the lepers was helping establish the 35 acre Town of Peace, a rehabilitating community for them. In the early 1960s, the Missionaries of Charity sta …
