Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa,[a] was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire,[b] she was raised in a devoutly Catholic family. At the age of 18, she moved to Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto and later to India, where she lived most of her life and carried out her missionary work. On 4 September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The anniversary of her death, 5 September, is now observed as her feast day.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation that was initially dedicated to serving "the poorest of the poor" in the slums of Calcutta. Over the decades, the congregation grew to operate in over 133 countries, as of 2012,[6] with more than 4,500 nuns managing homes for those dying from HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis, as well as running soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, orphanages, and schools. Members of the order take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience and also profess a fourth vow: to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor."[7]
Mother Teresa received several honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. However, she was also a controversial figure, drawing criticism for her staunch opposition to abortion and contraception, as well as for the poor conditions in some of her charitable institutions. Her life and work have inspired books, documentaries, and films. Her authorized biography, written by Navin Chawla, was published in 1992, and on 6 September 2017, she was named a co-patron of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta alongside Saint Francis Xavier.
Biography
Early life
Part of a series on
Christianity in India
Christianity in India
Communities
People
Denominations
Organisations
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Urban stone-and-glass building
Memorial House of Mother Teresa in her native Skopje
Mother Teresa's given name was Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha)[8] Bojaxhiu (Anjezë is a cognate of Agnes; Gonxhe means "flower bud" in Albanian).[9] She was born on 26 August 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family[10][11][12] in Skopje, Ottoman Empire (now the capital of North Macedonia).[13][14] She was baptised in Skopje the day after her birth.[8] She later considered 27 August, the day she was baptised, her "true birthday".[13]
She was the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai).[15] Her father, who was involved in Albanian-community politics in Ottoman Macedonia, died in 1919 when she was eight years old.[13][c] He was born in Prizren (today in Kosovo), however, his family was from Mirdita (present-day Albania).[16][17] Her mother may have been from a village near Gjakova,[18] believed by her offspring to be Bishtazhin.[19]
According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, Anjezë was in her early years when she became fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life.[20] Her resolve strengthened on 15 August 1928 as she prayed at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimages.[21]
Anjezë left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English with the intent of becoming a missionary; English was the language of instruction of the Sisters of Loreto in India.[22] She saw neither her mother nor her sister again.[23] Her family lived in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to Tirana.[24]
She arrived in India in 1929[25] and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas,[26] where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent.[27] She took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries;[28][29] because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, she opted for its Spanish spelling of Teresa.[30]
Teresa took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while she was a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta, taking the style of 'Mother' as part of Loreto custom.[13][31][32] She served there for nearly twenty years and was appointed its headmistress in 1944.[33] Although Mother Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.[34] The Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city, and the August 1946 Direct Action Day began a period of Muslim-Hindu violence.[35]
In 1946, during a visit to Darjeeling by train, Mother Teresa felt that she heard the call of her inner conscience to serve the poor of India for Jesus. She asked for and received permission to leave the school. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, choosing a white sari with two blue borders as the order's habit.
Missionaries of Charity
Main article: Missionaries of Charity
Three-story building with a sign and a statue
Missionaries of Charity motherhouse in Calcutta
On 10 September 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" when she travelled by train to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."[36] Joseph Langford, MC, founder of her congregation of priests, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, later wrote, "Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become Mother Teresa".[37]
She began missionary work with the poor in 1948,[25] replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple, white cotton sari with a blue border. Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent several months in Patna to receive basic medical training at Holy Family Hospital and ventured into the slums.[38][39] She founded a school in Motijhil, Calcutta, before she began tending to the poor and hungry.[40] At the beginning of 1949, Mother Teresa was joined in her effort by a group of young women, and she laid the foundation for a new religious community helping the "poorest among the poor".[41]
Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister.[42] Mother Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulty. With no income, she begged for food and supplies and experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months:
Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then, the comfort of Loreto [her former congregation] came to tempt me. "You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again", the Tempter kept on saying. ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.[43]
Four nuns in sandals and white-and-blue saris
Missionaries of Charity in traditional saris
On 7 October 1950, Mother Teresa received Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity.[44] In her words, it would care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, 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".[45]
In 1952, Mother Teresa opened her first hospice with help from Calcutta officials. She converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, free for the poor, and renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday).[46] Those brought to the home received medical attention and the opportunity to die with dignity in accordance with their faith: Muslims were to read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received extreme unction.[47] "A beautiful death", Mother Teresa said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted."[47]
White, older building
Nirmal Hriday, Mother Teresa's Calcutta hospice, in 2007
She opened a hospice for those with leprosy, calling it Shanti Nagar (City of Peace).[48] The Missionaries of Charity established leprosy-outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, dressings and food.[49] The Missionaries of Charity took in an increasing number of homeless children; in 1955, Mother Teresa opened Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.[50]
The congregation began to attract recruits and donations, and by the 1960s it had opened hospices, orphanages and leper houses throughout India. Mother Teresa then expanded the congregation abroad, opening a house in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters.[51] Houses followed in Italy (Rome), Tanzania and Austria in 1968, and, during the 1970s, the congregation opened houses and foundations in the United States and dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.[52]
The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. Responding to requests by many priests, in 1981, Mother Teresa founded the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests[53] and with Joseph Langford founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984 to combine the vocational aims of the Missionaries of Charity with the resources of the priesthood.[54]
By 1997, the 13-member Calcutta congregation had grown to more than 4,000 sisters who managed orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres worldwide, caring for refugees, the blind, the disabled, the aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine.[55] By 2007, the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 450 brothers and 5,000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.[56]
International charity
Mother Teresa said, "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."[4]
Fluent in five languages – Bengali,[57] Albanian, Serbian, English and Hindi – she made occasional trips outside India for humanitarian reasons.[58] These included, in 1971, a visit with four of her sisters, to Troubles-era Belfast. Her suggestion that the conditions she had found justified an ongoing mission was the cause of some embarrassment.[59] Reportedly under pressure from senior clergy, who believed "the missionary traffic should be in other direction", and despite local welcome and support, she and her sisters abruptly left the city in 1973.[60][61]
At the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982, Mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas.[62] Accompanied by Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the hospital to evacuate the young patients.[63]
When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the late 1980s, Mother Teresa expanded her efforts to Communist countries which had rejected the Missionaries of Charity. She began dozens of projects, undeterred by criticism of her stands against abortion and divorce: "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work". She visited Armenia after the 1988 earthquake[64] and met with Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov.[65]
Mother Teresa travelled to assist the hungry in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia.[66][67][68] In 1991 she returned to Albania for the first time, opening a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana.[69]
By 1996, the Missionaries of Charity operated 517 missions in over 100 countries.[70] The number of sisters in the Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands, serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centres worldwide. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx area of New York City, and by 1984 the congregation operated 19 establishments throughout the country.[71]
Declining health and death
Mother Teresa had a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while she was visiting Pope John Paul II. Following a second attack in 1989, she received a pacemaker.[72] In 1991, after a bout of pneumonia in Mexico, she had additional heart problems. Although Mother Teresa offered to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity, in a secret ballot the sisters of the congregation voted for her to stay, and she agreed to continue.[73]
In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell, breaking her collarbone, and four months later she had malaria and heart failure. Although she underwent heart surgery, her health was clearly declining. According to the Archbishop of Calcutta Henry Sebastian D'Souza, he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism (with her permission) when she was first hospitalised with cardiac problems because he thought she might be under attack by the devil.[74] On 13 March 1997, Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September.[75][76][77]
Reactions
Mother Teresa lay in repose in an open casket in St Thomas, Calcutta, for a week before her funeral. She received a state funeral from the Indian government in gratitude for her service to the poor of all religions in the country.[78] Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, the Pope's representative, delivered the homily at the service.[79] Mother Teresa's death was mourned in the secular and religious communities. Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif called her "a rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes. Her life-long devotion to the care of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to our humanity."[80] According to former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, "She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world."[80]
Recognition and reception
India
From the Indian government, under the name of Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa was issued a diplomatic passport.[81] She received the Padma Shri in 1962 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969.[82] She later received other Indian awards, including the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award) in 1980.[83] Mother Teresa's official biography, by Navin Chawla, was published in 1992.[84] In Calcutta, she is worshipped as a deity by some Hindus.[85]
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, the government of India issued a special ₹5 coin (the amount of money Mother Teresa had when she arrived in India) on 28 August 2010. President Pratibha Patil said, "Clad in a white sari with a blue border, she and the sisters of Missionaries of Charity became a symbol of hope to many—namely, the aged, the destitute, the unemployed, the diseased, the terminally ill, and those abandoned by their families."[86]
Indian views of Mother Teresa are not uniformly favourable. Aroup Chatterjee, a physician born and raised in Calcutta who was an activist in the city's slums for years around 1980 before moving to the UK, said that he "never even saw any nuns in those slums".[87] His research, involving more than 100 interviews with volunteers, nuns and others familiar with the Missionaries of Charity, was described in a 2003 book critical of Mother Teresa.[87] Chatterjee criticized her for promoting a "cult of suffering" and a distorted, negative image of Calcutta, exaggerating work done by her mission and misusing funds and privileges at her disposal.[87][88] According to him, some of the hygiene problems he had criticized (such as the reuse of needles) improved after Mother Teresa's death in 1997.[87]
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, mayor of Calcutta from 2005 to 2010, said that "she had no significant impact on the poor of this city", glorified illness instead of treating it and misrepresented the city: "No doubt there was poverty in Calcutta, but it was never a city of lepers and beggars, as Mother Teresa presented it."[89] On the Hindu right, the Bharatiya Janata Party clashed with Mother Teresa over the Christian Dalits but praised her in death and sent a representative to her funeral.[90] Vishwa Hindu Parishad, however, opposed the government decision to grant her a state funeral. Secretary Giriraj Kishore said that "her first duty was to the Church and social service was incidental", accusing her of favouring Christians and conducting "secret baptisms" of the dying.[91][92] In a front-page tribute, the Indian fortnightly Frontline dismissed the charges as "patently false" and said that they had "made no impact on the public perception of her work, especially in Calcutta". Praising her "selfless caring", energy and bravery, the author of the tribute criticised Teresa's public campaign against abortion and her claim to be non-political.[93]
In February 2015 Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the Hindu right-wing organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said that Mother Teresa's objective was "to convert the person, who was being served, into a Christian".[94] Former RSS spokesperson M. G. Vaidhya supported Bhagwat's assessment, and the organisation accused the media of "distorting facts about Bhagwat's remarks". Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien, CPI leader Atul Anjan and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal protested Bhagwat's statement.[95] In 1991[96] the country's first modern University, Senate of Serampore College (University) awarded a honorary doctorate during registrarship of D. S. Satyaranjan.
Elsewhere
US President Ronald Regan and Nancy Reagan with Mother Teresa, standing at a microphone
President Ronald Reagan presents Mother Teresa with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony as First Lady Nancy Reagan looks on, 20 June 1985.
Mother Teresa received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, given for work in South or East Asia, in 1962. According to its citation, "The Board of Trustees recognises her merciful cognisance of the abject poor of a foreign land, in whose service she has led a new congregation".[97] By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa was an international celebrity. She had been catapulted to fame via Malcolm Muggeridge's 1969 BBC documentary, Something Beautiful for God, before he released a 1971 book of the same name.[98] Muggeridge was undergoing a spiritual journey of his own at the time.[99] During filming, footage shot in poor lighting (particularly at the Home for the Dying) was thought unlikely to be usable by the crew; the crew had been using new, untested photographic film. In England, the footage was found to be extremely well-lit and Muggeridge called it a miracle of "divine light" from Teresa.[100] Other crew members said that it was due to a new type of ultra-sensitive Kodak film.[101] Muggeridge later converted to Catholicism.[102]
Around this time, the Catholic world began to honour Mother Teresa publicly. Pope Paul VI gave her the inaugural Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, commending her work with the poor, her display of Christian charity and her efforts for peace.[103] She received the Pacem in Terris Award in 1976.[104] After her death, Teresa progressed rapidly on the road to sainthood.
Mother Teresa with Michèle Duvalier in January 1981
She was honoured by governments and civilian organisations and Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, Albanian: [aˈɲɛzÉ™ ˈɡɔndÊ’É› bÉ”jaˈdÊ’i.u]; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa,[a] was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire,[b] she was raised in a devoutly Catholic family. At the age of 18, she moved to Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto and later to India, where she lived most of her life and carried out her missionary work. On 4 September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The anniversary of her death, 5 September, is now observed as her feast day.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation that was initially dedicated to serving "the poorest of the poor" in the slums of Calcutta. Over the decades, the congregation grew to operate in over 133 countries, as of 2012,[6] with more than 4,500 nuns managing homes for those dying from HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis, as well as running soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, orphanages, and schools. Members of the order take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience and also profess a fourth vow: to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor."[7]
Mother Teresa received several honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. However, she was also a controversial figure, drawing criticism for her staunch opposition to abortion and contraception, as well as for the poor conditions in some of her charitable institutions. Her life and work have inspired books, documentaries, and films. Her authorized biography, written by Navin Chawla, was published in 1992, and on 6 September 2017, she was named a co-patron of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta alongside Saint Francis Xavier.
Biography
Early life
Part of a series on
Christianity in India
Christianity in India
Communities
People
Denominations
Organisations
vte
Urban stone-and-glass building
Memorial House of Mother Teresa in her native Skopje
Mother Teresa's given name was Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha)[8] Bojaxhiu (Anjezë is a cognate of Agnes; Gonxhe means "flower bud" in Albanian).[9] She was born on 26 August 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family[10][11][12] in Skopje, Ottoman Empire (now the capital of North Macedonia).[13][14] She was baptised in Skopje the day after her birth.[8] She later considered 27 August, the day she was baptised, her "true birthday".[13]
She was the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai).[15] Her father, who was involved in Albanian-community politics in Ottoman Macedonia, died in 1919 when she was eight years old.[13][c] He was born in Prizren (today in Kosovo), however, his family was from Mirdita (present-day Albania).[16][17] Her mother may have been from a village near Gjakova,[18] believed by her offspring to be Bishtazhin.[19]
According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, Anjezë was in her early years when she became fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life.[20] Her resolve strengthened on 15 August 1928 as she prayed at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimages.[21]
Anjezë left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English with the intent of becoming a missionary; English was the language of instruction of the Sisters of Loreto in India.[22] She saw neither her mother nor her sister again.[23] Her family lived in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to Tirana.[24]
She arrived in India in 1929[25] and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas,[26] where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent.[27] She took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries;[28][29] because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, she opted for its Spanish spelling of Teresa.[30]
Teresa took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while she was a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta, taking the style of 'Mother' as part of Loreto custom.[13][31][32] She served there for nearly twenty years and was appointed its headmistress in 1944.[33] Although Mother Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.[34] The Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city, and the August 1946 Direct Action Day began a period of Muslim-Hindu violence.[35]
In 1946, during a visit to Darjeeling by train, Mother Teresa felt that she heard the call of her inner conscience to serve the poor of India for Jesus. She asked for and received permission to leave the school. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, choosing a white sari with two blue borders as the order's habit.
Missionaries of Charity
Main article: Missionaries of Charity
Three-story building with a sign and a statue
Missionaries of Charity motherhouse in Calcutta
On 10 September 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" when she travelled by train to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."[36] Joseph Langford, MC, founder of her congregation of priests, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, later wrote, "Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become Mother Teresa".[37]
She began missionary work with the poor in 1948,[25] replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple, white cotton sari with a blue border. Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent several months in Patna to receive basic medical training at Holy Family Hospital and ventured into the slums.[38][39] She founded a school in Motijhil, Calcutta, before she began tending to the poor and hungry.[40] At the beginning of 1949, Mother Teresa was joined in her effort by a group of young women, and she laid the foundation for a new religious community helping the "poorest among the poor".[41]
Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister.[42] Mother Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulty. With no income, she begged for food and supplies and experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months:
Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then, the comfort of Loreto [her former congregation] came to tempt me. "You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again", the Tempter kept on saying. ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.[43]
Four nuns in sandals and white-and-blue saris
Missionaries of Charity in traditional saris
On 7 October 1950, Mother Teresa received Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity.[44] In her words, it would care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, 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".[45]
In 1952, Mother Teresa opened her first hospice with help from Calcutta officials. She converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, free for the poor, and renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday).[46] Those brought to the home received medical attention and the opportunity to die with dignity in accordance with their faith: Muslims were to read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received extreme unction.[47] "A beautiful death", Mother Teresa said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted."[47]
White, older building
Nirmal Hriday, Mother Teresa's Calcutta hospice, in 2007
She opened a hospice for those with leprosy, calling it Shanti Nagar (City of Peace).[48] The Missionaries of Charity established leprosy-outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, dressings and food.[49] The Missionaries of Charity took in an increasing number of homeless children; in 1955, Mother Teresa opened Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.[50]
The congregation began to attract recruits and donations, and by the 1960s it had opened hospices, orphanages and leper houses throughout India. Mother Teresa then expanded the congregation abroad, opening a house in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters.[51] Houses followed in Italy (Rome), Tanzania and Austria in 1968, and, during the 1970s, the congregation opened houses and foundations in the United States and dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.[52]
The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. Responding to requests by many priests, in 1981, Mother Teresa founded the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests[53] and with Joseph Langford founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984 to combine the vocational aims of the Missionaries of Charity with the resources of the priesthood.[54]
By 1997, the 13-member Calcutta congregation had grown to more than 4,000 sisters who managed orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres worldwide, caring for refugees, the blind, the disabled, the aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine.[55] By 2007, the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 450 brothers and 5,000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.[56]
International charity
Mother Teresa said, "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."[4]
Fluent in five languages – Bengali,[57] Albanian, Serbian, English and Hindi – she made occasional trips outside India for humanitarian reasons.[58] These included, in 1971, a visit with four of her sisters, to Troubles-era Belfast. Her suggestion that the conditions she had found justified an ongoing mission was the cause of some embarrassment.[59] Reportedly under pressure from senior clergy, who believed "the missionary traffic should be in other direction", and despite local welcome and support, she and her sisters abruptly left the city in 1973.[60][61]
At the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982, Mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas.[62] Accompanied by Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the hospital to evacuate the young patients.[63]
When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the late 1980s, Mother Teresa expanded her efforts to Communist countries which had rejected the Missionaries of Charity. She began dozens of projects, undeterred by criticism of her stands against abortion and divorce: "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work". She visited Armenia after the 1988 earthquake[64] and met with Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov.[65]
Mother Teresa travelled to assist the hungry in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia.[66][67][68] In 1991 she returned to Albania for the first time, opening a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana.[69]
By 1996, the Missionaries of Charity operated 517 missions in over 100 countries.[70] The number of sisters in the Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands, serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centres worldwide. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx area of New York City, and by 1984 the congregation operated 19 establishments throughout the country.[71]
Declining health and death
Mother Teresa had a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while she was visiting Pope John Paul II. Following a second attack in 1989, she received a pacemaker.[72] In 1991, after a bout of pneumonia in Mexico, she had additional heart problems. Although Mother Teresa offered to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity, in a secret ballot the sisters of the congregation voted for her to stay, and she agreed to continue.[73]
In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell, breaking her collarbone, and four months later she had malaria and heart failure. Although she underwent heart surgery, her health was clearly declining. According to the Archbishop of Calcutta Henry Sebastian D'Souza, he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism (with her permission) when she was first hospitalised with cardiac problems because he thought she might be under attack by the devil.[74] On 13 March 1997, Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September.[75][76][77]
Reactions
Mother Teresa lay in repose in an open casket in St Thomas, Calcutta, for a week before her funeral. She received a state funeral from the Indian government in gratitude for her service to the poor of all religions in the country.[78] Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, the Pope's representative, delivered the homily at the service.[79] Mother Teresa's death was mourned in the secular and religious communities. Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif called her "a rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes. Her life-long devotion to the care of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to our humanity."[80] According to former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, "She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world."[80]
Recognition and reception
India
From the Indian government, under the name of Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa was issued a diplomatic passport.[81] She received the Padma Shri in 1962 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969.[82] She later received other Indian awards, including the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award) in 1980.[83] Mother Teresa's official biography, by Navin Chawla, was published in 1992.[84] In Calcutta, she is worshipped as a deity by some Hindus.[85]
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, the government of India issued a special ₹5 coin (the amount of money Mother Teresa had when she arrived in India) on 28 August 2010. President Pratibha Patil said, "Clad in a white sari with a blue border, she and the sisters of Missionaries of Charity became a symbol of hope to many—namely, the aged, the destitute, the unemployed, the diseased, the terminally ill, and those abandoned by their families."[86]
Indian views of Mother Teresa are not uniformly favourable. Aroup Chatterjee, a physician born and raised in Calcutta who was an activist in the city's slums for years around 1980 before moving to the UK, said that he "never even saw any nuns in those slums".[87] His research, involving more than 100 interviews with volunteers, nuns and others familiar with the Missionaries of Charity, was described in a 2003 book critical of Mother Teresa.[87] Chatterjee criticized her for promoting a "cult of suffering" and a distorted, negative image of Calcutta, exaggerating work done by her mission and misusing funds and privileges at her disposal.[87][88] According to him, some of the hygiene problems he had criticized (such as the reuse of needles) improved after Mother Teresa's death in 1997.[87]
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, mayor of Calcutta from 2005 to 2010, said that "she had no significant impact on the poor of this city", glorified illness instead of treating it and misrepresented the city: "No doubt there was poverty in Calcutta, but it was never a city of lepers and beggars, as Mother Teresa presented it."[89] On the Hindu right, the Bharatiya Janata Party clashed with Mother Teresa over the Christian Dalits but praised her in death and sent a representative to her funeral.[90] Vishwa Hindu Parishad, however, opposed the government decision to grant her a state funeral. Secretary Giriraj Kishore said that "her first duty was to the Church and social service was incidental", accusing her of favouring Christians and conducting "secret baptisms" of the dying.[91][92] In a front-page tribute, the Indian fortnightly Frontline dismissed the charges as "patently false" and said that they had "made no impact on the public perception of her work, especially in Calcutta". Praising her "selfless caring", energy and bravery, the author of the tribute criticised Teresa's public campaign against abortion and her claim to be non-political.[93]
In February 2015 Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the Hindu right-wing organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said that Mother Teresa's objective was "to convert the person, who was being served, into a Christian".[94] Former RSS spokesperson M. G. Vaidhya supported Bhagwat's assessment, and the organisation accused the media of "distorting facts about Bhagwat's remarks". Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien, CPI leader Atul Anjan and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal protested Bhagwat's statement.[95] In 1991[96] the country's first modern University, Senate of Serampore College (University) awarded a honorary doctorate during registrarship of D. S. Satyaranjan.
Elsewhere
US President Ronald Regan and Nancy Reagan with Mother Teresa, standing at a microphone
President Ronald Reagan presents Mother Teresa with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony as First Lady Nancy Reagan looks on, 20 June 1985.
Mother Teresa received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, given for work in South or East Asia, in 1962. According to its citation, "The Board of Trustees recognises her merciful cognisance of the abject poor of a foreign land, in whose service she has led a new congregation".[97] By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa was an international celebrity. She had been catapulted to fame via Malcolm Muggeridge's 1969 BBC documentary, Something Beautiful for God, before he released a 1971 book of the same name.[98] Muggeridge was undergoing a spiritual journey of his own at the time.[99] During filming, footage shot in poor lighting (particularly at the Home for the Dying) was thought unlikely to be usable by the crew; the crew had been using new, untested photographic film. In England, the footage was found to be extremely well-lit and Muggeridge called it a miracle of "divine light" from Teresa.[100] Other crew members said that it was due to a new type of ultra-sensitive Kodak film.[101] Muggeridge later converted to Catholicism.[102]
Around this time, the Catholic world began to honour Mother Teresa publicly. Pope Paul VI gave her the inaugural Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, commending her work with the poor, her display of Christian charity and her efforts for peace.[103] She received the Pacem in Terris Award in 1976.[104] After her death, Teresa progressed rapidly on the road to sainthood.
Mother Teresa