Agnes (Biography of Mother Teresa)

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhu in Skopje, Macedonia on August, 26, 1910. At the age of eighteen, she left her home in Skopje and joined an Irish community of nuns with tasks in India. She was sent to India after a few months of training in Dublin and took her initial vows as a nun on May, 24, 1931.
Mother Teresa taught at St Mary's High School in Calcutta from 1931 to 1948, but the suffering and poverty she glimsped outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that she received permission to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the hovels and slums of Calcutta from her superiors. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence and started an open-air school for slum children.

She was soon joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming so it made it possible for Mother Teresa to extend the scope of her work. On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary mission was to love and care for persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965, the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

Today, the Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in countries such as Asia, Africa and Latin America and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural castastrophes like floods, epidemics, famine, and for refugees.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted ny Co-Workers who became as International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than forty countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.

Mother Teresa's work has been regconised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize for 1972 and the Nehru prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding for 1972. She also received the Balan prize for 1979 and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

Sadly, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997.