September 5: On This Day in World History … briefly

1997:     Mother Teresa dies at 87

Mother Teresa, known in the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in Skopje (now the capital of Macedonia), then part of the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. After living in Macedonia for eighteen years she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.

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.”

Joseph Langford later wrote “Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become ‘Mother’ Teresa.”

She began missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple, white cotton sari with a blue border. Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent several months in Patna to receive basic medical training at Holy Family Hospital and ventured into the slums. She founded a school in Motijhil, Kolkata, before she began tending to the poor and hungry.

At the beginning of 1949 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’. Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister. 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.”

In 1950 Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation which had over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries in 2012. The congregation manages homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children’s- and family counselling programmes; orphanages, and schools. Members, who take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, also profess a fourth vow: to give ‘wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor’.

Teresa received a number of honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She was canonised (recognised by the church as a saint) on September 4, 2016, and the anniversary of her death (September 5) is her feast day.

A controversial figure during her life and after her death, Teresa was admired by many for her charitable work. She was praised and criticised for her opposition to abortion, and criticised for poor conditions in her houses for the dying. Her authorised biography was written by Navin Chawla and published in 1992, and she has been the subject of films and other books. On September 6, 2017, Teresa was named co-patron of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta, alongside St Francis Xavier.

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