Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was a Christian nun who spent her life helping the poor people of India. She became famous throughout the world for giving up everything for others without any reward. She also founded the 'Missionaries of Charity'; a Christian community for people who want to spend their lives helping the poor and sick.

Mother Teresa was born on 26th August 1910 in a town called Skopje, which is in modern-day Macedonia, in eastern Europe. Her parents both came from Albania and her father owned a grocer's shop. Her real name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

Agnes went to school in Skopje. At that time it was still quite unusual for girls to go to school. Her father died suddenly when she was eight years old, leaving her mother to bring up Agnes and her brothers and sisters. Her mother's strength and faith in God greatly influenced Agnes. By the time she was 12 she had decided that she wanted to spend her life serving God and telling others about Him.

When she was 18, Agnes moved to Ireland, where she became a nun and took on the name of Sister Mary Teresa. In 1929, Sister Teresa set sail for Calcutta, in India, to be a missionary; to tell people in other countries about Christianity. When she arrived she began teaching in a Roman Catholic school called St Mary's. She taught there for 17 years. While she was there she completed her nun's vows, which meant she could now be called Mother Teresa rather than Sister.

In 1946, Mother Teresa caught a disease called tuberculosis (TB) and was sent to Darjeeling, a town in the Himalayan Mountains, to recover. On the train journey back to Calcutta she believed she received a sign from Jesus, calling her to help poor and sick people in India.

It took two years for Mother Teresa to get permission to start her own religious group, 'The Missionaries of Charity'. It was dedicated to helping the poorest of the poor. In 1948 she walked out of her old convent to start her new life in the slums. On her first day she visited families, washed the sores of slum children, cared for an old man lying sick on the road and nursed a woman dying of hunger and tuberculosis.

She began her work all alone, but soon her old pupils from Saint Mary's began to join her. Gradually the Missionaries of Charity grew and grew. By the 1960s, Mother Teresa was sending her helpers all over India. She set up branches of the organisation all over the world, especially in the poorest countries. This included her own home country of Albania.

In 1979 Mother Teresa received one of the world's top awards; the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what she said in her acceptance speech:

"I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive [the Nobel] in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless; of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of 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."

She asked for the traditional Nobel Prize feast to be cancelled and for the money to be spent on food for Calcutta's poor instead.

In March 1997 Mother Teresa gave up her position as head of the Missionaries of Charity due to ill health. She died six months later on 5th September at the age of 87. People from all over the world campaigned for her to be made a saint, and in October 2003 she was officially beatified by Pope John Paul II. Beatification is one of the stages in the process of becoming a saint.

Each year, on the anniversary of her death, people get together to remember Mother Teresa and many statues of her have been built all over the world. The Missionaries of Charity continue to do good work all over the world, with more than 610 branches in 123 countries.