Mother Teresa
(1910–1997), founder of the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa was born and named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, northern Macedonia. At eighteen she joined the Sisters of Loretto, a group of Irish nuns who ran schools in India, and took the name Teresa in honor of the French saint Térèse of Lisieux. She spent seventeen years as a teacher and then a principal of a Calcutta high school for privileged Bengali girls. Then, in 1946, during a train ride to Darjeeling for a religious retreat, Teresa received a call in which she felt God directed her to leave her life as an enclosed sister to work on the streets with the poor. In 1950 the Vatican formally established her new order—the Missionaries of Charity. In addition to the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the Missionaries of Charity vowed to give "wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor." Mother Teresa learned Hindi and Bengali, and she asked for and received Indian citizenship in 1948. In 1965 Pope Paul VI made her order a pontifical order, which opened the way to expansion outside India.

Mother Teresa went from relative obscurity in her work with the poor to a figure of international attention with the publication of Malcolm Muggeridge's Something Beautiful for God in 1971. Attention to Mother Teresa grew as she received honorary degrees and medals, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to her by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her service to the poor. Mother Teresa became a well-recognized figure in the latter years of her life, meeting with American presidents and famous international personages. Widely regarded as a "living saint," Mother Teresa was an icon in the American media, which presented stark images of her caring for the dying and poor and spurning the trappings of wealth and power. In the 1980s and 1990s the term "Mother Teresa" became a catchphrase for anyone who was seen as extraordinarily charitable or holy, and she was seen as representing the Christian faith and the Catholic heritage at its best. Mother Teresa's appeal cut across ideological, religious, and national lines. For many Americans, disillusioned with religious institutionalism and conflict and with their own culture, which appeared increasingly materialistic as the century closed, Mother Teresa was a symbol of love, charity, and simplicity. Mother Teresa was voted American's Most Admired Woman in 1980, 1986, 1995, and 1996, growing more popular even as her health failed. After her death in 1997, calls were made to speed up the process for canonizing her as a saint.

At the time of her death Mother Teresa had created a network of nearly 600 homes spread across 130 countries that operated food centers, orphanages, leprosariums, AIDs hospices, and shelters for battered women, drug addicts, and the poor, unemployed, dying, insane, and aged. Mother Teresa spoke out against capital punishment and war. She was criticized for her adamant opposition to abortion and contraception.

See alsoMissionary Movements; Roman Catholicism; Sainthood.

Bibliography

Doig, Desmond. Mother Teresa, Her People, andHerWork. 1976.

Egan, Eileen. Such a Vision of the Street. 1985.

Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something Beautiful for God. 1971.

Porter, David. Mother Teresa: The Early Years. 1986.

Sebba, Anne. Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image. 1997.

Marie Anne Pagliarini