Mother Teresa: A Major Religious Figure in the Late 20th Century

by Yoon Joung Lee

The “Satin of Gutters,” Mother Teresa, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia in 1910. She was the youngest of the children of  an Albanian family.  Her father worked in Albanian politics but passed away when she was eight years old in 1919.  Since that time, her mother raised her as a  Roman Catholic.

When she was twelve years old, she felt the call of God and she decided to become a missionary to spread the love of God to the world.   At the age of eighteen she left Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto which is an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. Then, she was sent to India and took her initial vows as a nun.

From 1931 to 1948, she worked as a teacher at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta.  However, what catches her intentions the most was the outside world where people suffered from poverty.  She made such a deep impression of the outside and left the school.  She devoted herself to working for the poor in the slums of Calcutta. There, she founded an open-air school for slum children and gained many voluntary helpers and financial support.

In 1950, she founded “The Missionaries of Charity” by the permission from the Holy See. The organization’s mission was to take care of “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.”  This organization has spread all over the over the world including Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union.  It started with a small order, but by the 1990s, more than 40 countries with over one million workers are supporting and assisting the organization. Her numerous awards and distinctions include the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, the Nehru Prize in 1972, the Balzan Prize in 1979 and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

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