MOTHER TERESA
Mother Teresa was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, Yugoslavia, (now Macedonia). She wasn’t given the name Teresa, until 1930 in honour of St. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish saint of the 16th century. Her father, who was of Albanian descent, ran a small farm. At the age of eighteen she left the parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns which operated missions in Bengal before going to Dublin to learn English. After a few months training in Dublin she was sent to India, where in 1928 she took her initial vows as a nun. After spending some time in Ireland, she was sent to Calcutta, where she taught geography, history and catechism, at St. Mary's High School just outside of Calcutta. She later became principal of the school, and mastered Hindi and Bengali. However, 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. In 1952, she founded the Nirmal Hriday Home for the Dying in a former temple in Calcutta. It was there that they would care for the dying Indians that were found on the streets. No matter what disease the person had, she wanted them to be able to die in peace and with dignity. Her devotion to the poor won respect from millions around the world and a Nobel Peace Prize n 1979. Over the last 20 years, Mother Teresa suffered heart problems. She died on September 5th, 1997, in Calcutta, India, after suffering cardiac arrest. She was 87.
