Mother Teresa - 20th Century Humanitarian | Biography

Mother Teresa, to me, an icon of compassionate care for the poor and the disadvantaged. Mother Teresa was baptized Agnes Gonja Boyajiu in Skopje, Macedonia, around August 26, 1910. Born of Albanian descent, she joined the Loreto Sisters of Dublin, Ireland, at the age of 18 and took the name Sister Mary Teresa. One of the reasons some religious members take on new names, they have a favorite saint or they have someone who embodies for them a vision. Like Pope Francis, it's Francis of Assisi. In 1931, Mother Teresa traveled to Calcutta, India, to teach at an all-girls high school. But on September 10, 1946, a second calling from Christ led Mother Teresa to leave her convent and devote herself to working with the poorest of the poor. With Vatican permission, in 1950, Mother Teresa created the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa is one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century because of her ability to love those who were the most vulnerable in society. The work she did in India really challenged entrenched notions of caste and gender roles, and she worked very closely with lepers and other people who were disenfranchised, marginalized, dispossessed. During the 60s, Mother Teresa opened hospices, orphanages, and leper houses all over India and later expanded internationally. In 1982, during the Siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa traveled through a war zone to evacuate 37 children and later assisted radiation victims at Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia. Mother Teresa cares about people. She recognizes their spiritual dignity. She takes care of not just their spiritual needs, but their bodily needs as well, and she gathers other people to help her do that. That, in my mind, is a good humanitarian. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and donated the $192,000 prize fund to the poor in India. Six years later, President Ronald Reagan awarded her with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. By 1986, Mother Teresa operated 517 missions in more than 100 countries. A very charismatic nun, this little old nun with the wrinkled face and the very simple white sari, caring for the dying on the street, people that have so little hope. That's one of the reasons that she was given the Nobel Prize. After years of suffering from heart, lung, and kidney problems, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997. Two years later, Pope John Paul II opened a formal process toward beatification to make Mother Teresa an official Catholic saint.