Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun who spent most of her life caring for the poorest people in India. She lived from 1910 to 1997. She founded a group of nuns called the Missionaries of Charity, which now works in more than 130 countries. In 1979, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the sick and the dying.

She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in the city of Skopje, which is now in North Macedonia. Her family was Albanian and Catholic. When she was eight, her father died, and her mother raised her alone. At age 18, Anjezë left home to become a nun. She joined an Irish order called the Sisters of Loreto and took the name Sister Teresa. She never saw her mother or sister again.

The order sent her to India in 1929. For almost 20 years, she taught at a girls' school in Calcutta (now called Kolkata). The school sat behind high walls. Outside those walls, people were starving in the streets. In 1946, on a long train ride, Teresa said she heard a "call within a call" from God, telling her to leave the school and live among the poor.

She started small. She walked into the slums of Calcutta with no money and opened a school that used the dirt as a chalkboard. Other women joined her. In 1950, the Catholic Church approved her new group, the Missionaries of Charity. The nuns wore simple white saris with blue stripes, the same clothing poor women in India wore. They opened homes for orphans, lepers, and people who were dying alone in the streets.

Mother Teresa became famous around the world. World leaders met with her, and reporters followed her everywhere. She used the attention to ask for help for the poor. She accepted her Nobel Prize in a cheap sari worth about one dollar and asked that the fancy banquet money be given to the hungry instead.

Not everyone admired her. Some critics said her homes for the dying did not give people good medical care. Others questioned how she spent the money she raised. Her supporters said her goal was never to run hospitals but to make sure no one died feeling unloved.

She died in 1997 at age 87. In 2016, the Catholic Church declared her a saint. Today she is officially known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, and the Missionaries of Charity continue her work around the world.