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Our Namesake
Mother Teresa, 1910-1997
Mother Teresa is among the most well-known and highly respected women in the world in the twentieth century. She dedicated her life to helping the poor, the sick, and the dying around the world, most notably in India.
She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, Yugoslavia (what is now Macedonia). Since her father was co-owner of a construction firm, her family lived comfortably while she was growing up. In 1928 she decided to become a nun and traveled to Dublin, Ireland, to join the Sisters of Loreto, a religious order founded in the seventeenth century. After studying at the convent for less than a year, she left to join the Loreto convent in the city of Darjeeling in northeast India. On May 24, 1931, she took the name of "Teresa" in honor of St. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish nun.
In 1929 Mother Teresa was assigned to teach geography at St. Mary's High School for Girls in Calcutta, south of Darjeeling. At the time, the streets of Calcutta were crowded with beggars, lepers, and the homeless. On a train back to Darjeeling in 1946, Mother Teresa felt the need to leave her position at St. Mary's to care for the needy in the slums of Calcutta. After receiving the consent of her archbishop, she began her work initially focusing her efforts on poor children in the streets, teaching them how to read and how to care for themselves.
In 1948 Pope Pius XII granted Mother Teresa permission to live as an independent nun. After studying nursing for three months, she returned to Calcutta to found the Missionaries of Charity. For her habit she chose a plain white sari with a blue border, and a simple cross pinned to her left shoulder.
In 1965 Pope Paul VI placed the Missionaries of Charity directly under the control of the papacy (the office of the pope) and authorized Mother Teresa to expand the order outside of India. Centers to treat lepers, the blind, the disabled, the aged, and the dying were soon opened worldwide, including one in Rome in 1968. Mother Teresa also organized schools and orphanages for the poor. The Brothers of Charity, the male companion to the Sisters of Charity, was formed in the mid-1960s to run the homes for the dying.
In 1971, Pope Paul VI honored Mother Teresa by awarding her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. The following year, the government of India presented her with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. In 1979, she received her greatest award, the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa accepted all of these awards on behalf of the poor, using any money that accompanied them to fund her centers. By 1990 over 3,000 nuns belonged to the Missionaries of Charity, running centers in 25 countries.
It is with the deepest respect and reverence that we have chosen Mother Teresa to be our spiritual mentor and namesake. And it is our hope that, in some small way, we can keep her spirit alive in ourselves and our children.
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997.