Mother Teresa
1910-1997
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Biography
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Born in Macedonia, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu left for Ireland at the end of 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto, a Catholic congregation of women devoted to education and matters of social justice. Upon taking her final vows, she chose the name “Teresa;” the title “Mother,” as opposed to “Sister,” was common at Loreto. Soon after, Bojaxhiu sailed to Calcutta, India, and for nearly two decades taught in a school run by the religious order. In 1949, Mother Teresa heard her “call within a call” to dedicate her life to caring for the poor and the sick. She moved into the slums of Calcutta and operated a hostel for pilgrims. She became an Indian citizen and adopted the local sari that ultimately became her iconic style of dress. Those sympathetic to her cause joined her, and she became a national hero of India.
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Mother Teresa’s fame grew over the decades as more nuns and lay people joined her order and as the order built more and more centers for the disenfranchised (blind, disabled, elderly, HIV/AIDS, lepers). Various national leaders and religious figures recognized her work. She traveled constantly – even as her health deteriorated toward the end of her life – to spread her charitable message and open centers for health and education. In the 1980s, as the Soviet bloc crumbled, Mother Teresa made in-roads into the communist countries. She brought attention to the famine in Ethiopia and aid to the victims of Chernobyl.
When she died in 1997, her order and its 4,000 nuns were operating in most countries on earth. In her letters, published in 2007, Mother Teresa wrote that she had not felt God in her life over the previous five decades and had felt abandoned; she incorporated absence into her conception of faith and remained devout.
Honors
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Pope Paul gave Mother Teresa the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. In 1980 the Indian government bestowed upon her their nation’s highest civilian honors. In 2003 the Catholic Church beatified her (essentially announcing she was in a state of grace in Heaven), and Pope Frances I canonized her as a saint in 2016. Mother Teresa is credited with two miracles: in 1998 a medal worn by her was believed to have cured a woman of dangerous lump in her abdomen, and another relic of hers was credited with saving a man from lethal brain swelling in 2008. She is considered one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century, and her name has become synonymous with moral perfection.
Controversies
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Mother Teresa has been criticized for tying her aid to her evangelism, and some institutions she founded have been accused of financial and medical malfeasance. She was indeed associated with “Papa Doc” François Duvalier, the despotic and murderous president of Haiti in the 1960s, and with Charles Keating, who rose to infamy for defrauding investors and selling junk bonds, which exacerbated the financial crisis of 1980s. Her unwavering opposition to abortion and divorce have been considered antithetical to the charity she provided in other domains.
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