Mother Teresa

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire and now the capital of North Macedonia. She was the youngest of three children in an Albanian family. Her father, Nikollë Bojaxhiu, was a merchant and political activist who died suddenly when Anjezë was eight years old, leaving the family in financial difficulty. Her mother, Dranafile Bojaxhiu, raised the children with deep Catholic faith and instilled in them a commitment to charity—the family regularly invited the city's poor to share meals at their table.

From an early age, Anjezë was fascinated by stories of missionaries, particularly those serving in Bengal. At age 12, she felt her first stirrings of religious vocation. By 18, having decided to become a nun, she left home in September 1928 to join the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish congregation with missions in India. She would never see her mother or sister again. After a few months learning English at the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, she traveled to India in 1929, arriving in Kolkata (then Calcutta) in January. She took her first religious vows in 1931, choosing the name Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries.

For nearly two decades, Sister Teresa lived a relatively conventional religious life, teaching at St. Mary's School in Kolkata, a school for girls from wealthy Bengali families. She taught geography and history and eventually became the school's principal. By all accounts, she was a dedicated and beloved teacher. Yet beyond the school's walls lay the teeming slums of one of the world's most crowded cities, where millions lived in desperate poverty.

On September 10, 1946, while traveling by train to Darjeeling for a retreat, Sister Teresa experienced what she described as a direct call from God to leave the convent and serve the poorest of the poor while living among them. This 'call within a call,' as she termed it, marked the turning point of her life. She spent the next two years seeking permission from church authorities to pursue this radical departure from her vows of enclosure. In 1948, Pope Pius XII granted her permission to live outside the convent while remaining a religious sister.

In August 1948, Teresa exchanged her traditional Loreto habit for a simple white cotton sari with blue stripes—a garment she would wear for the rest of her life, which became her global symbol. She took a basic nursing course and then ventured into Kolkata's slums with no income, no support structure, and only her faith. She began by opening a school for slum children, teaching them basic hygiene and literacy in the open air.

In 1950, Mother Teresa received Vatican permission to start her own religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. The first members were former students from St. Mary's who joined her mission. The congregation's stated mission was to care for 'the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.'

The first major project was the establishment of Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a hospice for the dying, in 1952. Located in a former Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Kali, the Home for the Dying Destitutes provided free care to those who were found dying in the streets. The philosophy was straightforward: if people could not be saved, they should at least die with dignity, surrounded by care rather than abandoned on pavements. Many patients recovered and returned to their communities; those who died received last rites according to their faith—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or other.

The work expanded rapidly. In 1955, Mother Teresa opened Nirmal Shishu Bhavan, a home for orphans and abandoned children. In 1957, the Missionaries of Charity began working with people affected by leprosy, opening mobile clinics and later rehabilitation centers. The congregation grew from a dozen members in the early 1950s to thousands by the 1990s. The Missionaries of Charity expanded beyond India to Venezuela in 1965, then to Africa, Europe, and eventually every continent. By 1997, the congregation operated 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices, orphanages, soup kitchens, schools, and homes for people with HIV/AIDS.

Mother Teresa's work attracted international attention beginning in the 1960s, particularly after Malcolm Muggeridge's 1969 BBC documentary 'Something Beautiful for God' and his subsequent book of the same title. The documentary was viewed by millions and transformed Mother Teresa from a relatively obscure nun into a global icon of charity. In 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech, delivered in Oslo, she declined the traditional banquet in her honor, asking that the funds be given to the poor of Calcutta instead.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, she received numerous honors from governments, universities, and religious organizations worldwide. She met with presidents, prime ministers, and popes. Her diminutive figure and humble demeanor became instantly recognizable. She used her platform to advocate not only for the poor but also for her deeply conservative Catholic positions, including opposition to abortion, contraception, and divorce—stances that attracted both support and criticism.

As her fame grew, so did scrutiny and controversy. Critics questioned the quality of medical care in her facilities, the emphasis on spiritual comfort over pain relief, and the conversion activities sometimes associated with her work. Journalist Christopher Hitchens published sharp critiques, arguing that Mother Teresa romanticized poverty and suffering rather than addressing systemic causes. Academic studies raised concerns about inadequate pain management, the reuse of needles, and poor hygiene standards in some facilities. Defenders countered that she worked in contexts of extreme resource scarcity and that her primary mission was spiritual rather than medical, providing dignity and presence to those completely abandoned by society.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation about Mother Teresa came after her death, when her private correspondence was published in the 2007 book 'Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.' The letters revealed that for nearly fifty years—almost the entire duration of her public ministry—she experienced a profound sense of spiritual darkness, feeling abandoned by God and unable to sense His presence. She wrote of 'terrible darkness,' 'loneliness,' and feeling that her smile was 'a mask' or 'a cloak that covers everything.'

These revelations shocked many admirers but also deepened appreciation for her perseverance. Theologians and spiritual writers noted that her experience echoed the 'dark night of the soul' described by mystics like Saint John of the Cross. Despite feeling spiritually desolate, she continued her work with apparently unwavering commitment, suggesting a faith based not on consolation but on sheer will and fidelity to what she believed was her calling. This dimension of her life added complexity to her image, revealing not a saint floating above human struggle but someone who persisted through profound inner darkness.

Mother Teresa's health declined significantly in the 1990s. She suffered heart problems and in 1989 received a pacemaker. In 1991, after recovering from pneumonia and heart problems in Mexico, she offered to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity, but the sisters voted for her to stay. She finally stepped down in March 1997, just months before her death. Her successor, Sister Nirmala Joshi, was elected to lead the congregation.

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87, at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata. Her death came just days after the death of Princess Diana, with whom she had formed an unlikely friendship. The Indian government granted her a state funeral, an honor typically reserved for presidents and prime ministers. Thousands lined the streets of Kolkata as her body was carried on the same gun carriage that had borne Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Representatives from governments worldwide attended, and millions mourned across India and beyond.

The process of Mother Teresa's canonization began unusually quickly. Pope John Paul II waived the typical five-year waiting period and beatified her in 2003, just six years after her death. The Vatican recognized a miracle attributed to her intercession: the healing of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, from an abdominal tumor in 1998. Mother Teresa was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016, with hundreds of thousands gathering in St. Peter's Square. A second miracle—the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors—was recognized as part of the canonization process.

Her legacy remains multifaceted and contested. The Missionaries of Charity continue operating globally, though they have withdrawn from some countries and faced challenges adapting to changing times. In India, particularly in Kolkata, Mother Teresa remains a revered figure, though not without complexity—some celebrate her humanitarian service while others critique what they see as a colonial-era approach to poverty or question the emphasis on charity over structural change.

Scholars and activists continue debating whether her model of care—focused on individual acts of mercy—represents the highest form of compassion or whether it inadvertently sustained systems of inequality by making poverty bearable rather than intolerable. Her defenders argue that she met people at their point of deepest need, offering human dignity when nothing else was available, and that her work awakened global conscience to the reality of extreme poverty. Her critics contend that better medical practices could have been implemented and that celebrating suffering rather than fighting its causes served neither the poor nor justice.

What remains undisputed is her singular dedication. For nearly fifty years, she rose before dawn, spent hours in prayer, and devoted herself to the most marginalized people in some of the world's harshest conditions. Whether her legacy is ultimately defined by the specific outcomes of her work, the global consciousness she raised about poverty, or the example of radical commitment she embodied, Mother Teresa unmistakably shaped twentieth-century understanding of humanitarian service and the obligations of compassion.