Mother Teresa

This paper is an examination of the life, works, and impact of Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, an order of the Catholic Church based in Calcutta, India, which is dedicated to caring for the poor and the dying of all religions. Born to a middle-class family in what is now Macedonia, the former Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu became a nun when she was 18, dedicating her life to work among the poor of India. At 36, she felt called to leave her orders and found her own congregation to minister to the most desperately ill. Her work gradually came to international prominence, and, in 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Although she was hailed throughout the world as a living saint, she also attracted critics for her complete acceptance of the doctrines of the church, including her total opposition to abortion and birth control. In the final years until her death in September of 1997, she became a controversial figure in some circles, but the good she accomplished is undeniable, and her work goes on through the hundreds of missions she established throughout the world.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on August 26, 1910, in the city of Skopje in Yugoslavia. Some sources cite her date of birth as August 27; she observed later that this was actually the date of her baptism. After she became internationally famous, the government of the Republic of Macedonia, formed after she left to minister to the poor in India, publicly claimed her as Macedonian. Howev

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granted her petition, giving her a year to try her work. She opened her first slum school late in 1948 and, by 1950, had received approval from the Vatican to establish a new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, to care for the destitute, the abandoned, and the dying of all castes and religions. The beginning of her work coincided with India's attainment of freedom from British rule and an explosive wave of national violence that brought millions of refugees into the area. Mother Teresa therefore had more people in need of her care than had already lived in the region; however, she also had to deal with a greatly increased population with a healthy distrust of foreigners and their motives. She became an Indian citizen late in 1946, adopted the cheap white cotton sari of the Medical Mission Sisters of Patna (who also gave her basic nursing training), and set out to do the work for which she felt called. Mother Teresa concentrated on caring for the people who were the greatest outcasts of society, especially those who were dying. Malcolm Muggeridge, a BBC producer whose 1969 documentary, Something Beautiful for God, brought her work significant international recognition, observed, "Suffering and death, to her, are not

Category: History - M