Biography of “Mother Teresa”
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gnocchi Bojaxhin, in South Yugoslavia in 1910, came to Kolkata at the age of 18 to pursue her life’s mission of caring for the poorest of the poor.
After spending nearly two decades at the Loreto Convent, where she taught Geography and Catechism, Mother Teresa stepped out of the convent to begin her mission which was in response to a ‘call’ that she received on a train journey to Darjeeling.
Mother Teresa persuaded the citizens of Kolkata that leprosy was not contagious. She helped the leprosy-afflicted people to build a self-supporting colony at Titagarh.
Mother Teresa offered solace to the dying. She rescued children from dustbins. She was MOTHER to them. She cared for them, protected them.
The single school which she started in a slum in 1948 has grown by leaps and bounds.
The Missionaries of Charity-an Order which she started, now runs more than 755 homes in over 125 countries. They pursue their selfless task in feeding hungry mouths, tending to the terminally sick, teaching slum children and run homes for the men- tally destitute, leprosy afflicted and downtrodden members of the society. Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize in the year 1979. She passed away in 1997. Though she is no more, she has left a message behind: ‘faith and compassion can heal the world’.
