Born:- 26 August 1910
Died:- 5 September 1997 (aged 87)
Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC, also known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Albanian: [aˈ̲ɛzə ˈɡɔndʒɛ bɔjaˈdŒi.u]; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997). She spent the most of her life in India after moving to Ireland at the age of 18, having been born in Skopje, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. The Catholic Church canonized her as Saint Teresa of Calcutta on September 4, 2016. Her feast day is September 5, the anniversary of her death.
Mother Teresa established the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order that, as of 2012, has over 4,500 sisters spread across 133 nations. The church oversees homes for those suffering from leprosy, TB, and HIV/AIDS. In addition, the community maintains orphanages, schools, mobile clinics, hunger kitchens, and programs for families and children seeking counseling. Along with chastity, poverty, and obedience vows, members also declare a fourth vow to provide “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.”
Mother Teresa was awarded several honors, such as the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and the Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize in 1962. Mother Teresa was a divisive figure both during and after her life. While many people appreciated her humanitarian efforts, she also faced criticism for her opinions on abortion and contraception as well as the unsanitary conditions in her homes for the terminally ill. In addition to the 1992 publication of Navin Chawla’s authorized biography, she has been the focus of several other literary works. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta declared Mother Teresa and Saint Francis Xavier co-patrons on September 6, 2017.
Overview
Early Years
Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha) Bojaxhiu was Mother Teresa’s given name; Anjezë is a cognate of Agnes, and Gonxhe means “flower bud” in Albanian. She was born in Skopje, the Ottoman Empire’s capital (now the capital of North Macedonia) on August 26, 1910, into a Kosovar Albanian family. The day following her birth, she was baptized in Skopje. Her “true birthday” was eventually to be thought of as August 27, the day of her baptism.
She was Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu’s (Bernai) youngest child. When she was eight years old in 1919, her father, who was active in Ottoman Macedonian Albanian community politics, passed away. He was born in Prizren, which is now in Kosovo, although his family was originally from Mirdita, which is in modern-day Albania. She could have come from a hamlet close to Gjakova, which her children thought to be Bishtazhin.
In her early years, Anjezë was drawn to stories about missionaries’ lives and work in Bengal, according to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas. By the time she was twelve, she was certain that she should give her life to a religious life. On August 15, 1928, she grew more determined as she prayed at the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice shrine, to which she frequently made pilgrimages.
English was the language of teaching for the Sisters of Loreto in India, so in 1928, at the age of 18, Anjezë left home to join them at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, with the intention of becoming a missionary. She never saw her sister or mother again. Before relocating to Tirana in 1934, her family resided in Skopje.
After arriving in India in 1929, she started her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas. There, she taught Bengali at St. Teresa’s School, which was close to her convent. On May 24, 1931, she made her first religious vows. She decided to choose the Spanish spelling of Teresa instead of the French one, Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missions, as another nun in the convent had already chosen that name.
While teaching at the Loreto convent school at Entally, eastern Calcutta, Teresa professed her solemn vows on May 14, 1937, adopting the ‘Mother’ role in accordance with Loreto tradition. After over twenty years of service, she was named headmistress in 1944. Despite her love of teaching, Mother Teresa was more and more troubled by the poverty that surrounded her in Calcutta. The city had seen suffering and deaths from the Bengal famine in 1943, and Direct Action Day in August 1946 had sparked a period of unrest between Muslims and Hindus.
Mother Teresa received a calling from her inner conscience to assist the underprivileged people of India on behalf of Jesus in 1946 while on a rail trip to Darjeeling. She requested permission to leave the school, and it was granted. She established the Missionaries of Charity in 1950, and the order’s uniform was a white sari with two blue borders.
Missionaries of Charity
Teresa had an encounter that she subsequently referred to as “the call within the call” on September 10, 1946, while on her yearly retreat by rail from Calcutta to the Loreto monastery in Darjeeling. “I was supposed to leave the convent and live among the impoverished, helping them. It was a directive. It would have been a breach of confidence to fail.” Later, Joseph Langford, MC, the founder of her priestly order, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, stated, “Sister Teresa had just become Mother Teresa, though no one knew it at the time.”
In 1948, she started working as a missionary with the impoverished, giving up her customary Loreto uniform in favor of a plain white cotton sari with a blue border. Mother Teresa went into the slums, took a few months to study medicine at Holy Family Hospital in Patna, and became an Indian citizen. She started a school in Motijhil, Calcutta, prior to starting to help the underprivileged and starving. A new religious community dedicated to aiding the “poorest among the poor” was established by Mother Teresa at the beginning of 1949, with the assistance of several young ladies.
The prime minister and other Indian leaders took notice of her efforts right away. Mother Teresa’s first year was challenging, she wrote in her journal. During these early months, doubt, loneliness, and the desire to return to the comforts of convent life plagued the penniless woman who begged for food and supplies.
Our Lord desires for me to live as a free nun bearing the cross’s poverty. I took away a valuable lesson today. It must be very difficult for the poor to be impoverished. I walked and walked till my arms and legs hurt while searching for a place to live. As I considered how much pain they must be in body and spirit, searching for a place to live, food, and health. Then the familiarity of Loreto, her previous congregation, began to entice me.
The Tempter persisted in saying, “You just need to say the word and everything will be yours again.” Nevertheless, I choose to stay and carry out your Holy will in my life out of free will and love for you, God. I refrained from shedding a single tear.
Mother Teresa was granted authorization by the Vatican on October 7, 1950, to form the diocesan congregation that would eventually become the Missionaries of Charity. According to her, it would 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”.
With support from the government of Calcutta, Mother Teresa established her first hospice in 1952. She called it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday), and transformed an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, which is free for the impoverished. Hindus were given water from the Ganges, Muslims were instructed to read the Quran, and Catholics were given severe unction. Those who were taken to the facility were given medical care and the chance to pass away with dignity in line with their religious beliefs. “A beautiful death”, remarked Mother Teresa, “is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted.”
She founded Shanti Nagar (City of Peace), a hospice for leprosy patients. Throughout Calcutta, the Missionaries of Charity set up leprosy outreach clinics that offered food, medicine, and dressings. A growing number of homeless children were taken in by the Missionaries of Charity, and in 1955 Mother Teresa established the Children’s Home of the Immaculate Heart, Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, as a refuge for young people who were orphaned or homeless.
By the 1960s, the community had established leper institutions, hospices, and orphanages all throughout India thanks to its growing membership and charitable contributions. Then, in 1965, Mother Teresa opened a home in Venezuela with five sisters, thereby extending the congregation’s reach overseas. In 1968, homes were established in Italy (Rome), Tanzania, and Austria. Later, in the 1970s, the congregation established houses and foundations throughout the United States as well as several Asian, African, and European nations.
In 1963, the Missionaries of Charity Brothers were established, and in 1976, the Sisters established a contemplative branch. The Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity all included lay Catholics and non-Catholics. In response to several priests’ demands, Mother Teresa established the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests in 1981. In 1984, she and Joseph Langford established the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, a religious order that combined the Missionaries of Charity’s vocational goals with the priesthood’s resources.
The congregation of 13 women from Calcutta expanded to over 4,000 by 1997, managing orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charitable centers throughout the globe. They assisted refugees, the blind, the crippled, the elderly, alcoholics, the impoverished and homeless, and those affected by floods, epidemics, and hunger. About 450 brothers and 5,000 sisters made up the Missionaries of Charity by the year 2007, and they ran 600 missions, schools, and shelters throughout 120 countries.
International charity
Mother Teresa declared, “I am Albanian by blood. An Indian by citizenship. I am a Catholic nun by faith. Regarding my vocation, I am a part of the world. I completely belong to Jesus’ heart in terms of my own.”
Speaking Albanian, Serbian, Bengali, English, and Hindi fluently, she occasionally traveled outside of India for humanitarian purposes. Among these was a trip to Belfast during the Troubles in 1971, which she took with four of her sisters. There was considerable shame in her claim that the conditions she had uncovered warranted a continuous mission. She and her sisters unexpectedly left the city in 1973, reportedly under pressure from senior clergy who felt that “the missionary traffic should be in another direction” and in spite of the support and welcome they received locally.
Mother Teresa mediated a brief cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian rebels during the height of the 1982 Siege of Beirut, saving the lives of 37 children who were imprisoned in a front-line hospital. She traveled through the conflict area to the hospital with Red Cross personnel at her side in order to remove the young patients.
In the late 1980s, when relations opened up in Eastern Europe, Mother Teresa extended her outreach to Communist nations that had previously turned away the Missionaries of Charity. Unfazed by criticism for her anti-abortion and anti-divorce stance, she started hundreds of initiatives, saying, “No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.” Following the 1988 earthquake, she traveled to Armenia and had a meeting with Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov.
Mother Teresa traveled to help victims of the Armenian disaster, the radiation victims at Chernobyl, and the hungry in Ethiopia. Her first visit back to Albania was in 1991 when she established a Missionaries of Charity Brothers house in Tirana.
The Missionaries of Charity ran 517 missions in more than 100 countries by 1996. The Missionaries of Charity saw an increase in membership from twelve to thousands of sisters who served the “poorest of the poor” in 450 locations around the globe. In the South Bronx neighborhood of New York City, the Missionaries of Charity community opened its first house in the United States. By 1984, the congregation had 19 locations across the nation.
Declining Mortality and Health
In 1983, while Mother Teresa was visiting Pope John Paul II in Rome, she suffered a heart attack. She was fitted with a pacemaker in 1989 after suffering another incident. Following a case of pneumonia in Mexico in 1991, she had further heart issues. Mother Teresa volunteered to step down as leader of the Missionaries of Charity, but the other sisters in the community voted in secret to keep her in that position, so she accepted.
Mother Teresa suffered a broken collarbone in an April 1996 fall. Four months later, she had malaria and heart failure. Despite having heart surgery, it was evident that her condition was deteriorating. When she was originally hospitalized for cardiac issues, the Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry Sebastian D’Souza, allegedly ordered a priest to perform an exorcism (with her consent) because he believed she may be under demonic attack. Mother Teresa left her position as the leader of the Missionaries of Charity on March 13, 1997. September 5th was her death date.
Reactions
A week before to her funeral, Mother Teresa was laid to rest in an open coffin at St. Thomas, Calcutta. The Indian government honored her dedication to the underprivileged of all religions in the nation with a state burial. The Pope’s delegate, Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, gave the homily during the ceremony. Both the religious and secular worlds expressed sadness at Mother Teresa’s passing. She was referred to as “a rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes” by Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. One of the best instances of service to mankind throughout her life was her unwavering commitment to helping the ill, the impoverished, and the underprivileged.”
She is the United Nations, according to former Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. She is the world’s peacemaker.”
Acknowledgment and Welcome
India
Mother Teresa received a diplomatic passport under the name Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu from the Indian government. In 1962, she was awarded the Padma Shri, and in 1969, she was given the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. Later on, she was given further honors from India, such as the country’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980. In 1992, Navin Chawla’s official biography of Mother Teresa was released. There are Hindus in Calcutta who revere her as a divinity.
On August 28, 2010, the Indian government released a commemorative ₹5 coin, which represents the amount of money Mother Teresa had when she first came in the country, to mark the 100th anniversary of her birth. President Pratibha Patil stated, “Clad in a white sari with a blue border, she and the sisters of Missionaries of Charity became a symbol of hope to many—namely, the aged, the destitute, the unemployed, the diseased, the terminally ill, and those abandoned by their families.”
Mother Teresa is not universally regarded favorably in India. One physician who was born and bred in Calcutta, Aroup Chatterjee, stated that he “never even saw any nuns in those slums” during his years as an activist in the city’s slums until relocating to the UK in the early 1980s. More than 100 interviews with volunteers, nuns, and other people acquainted with the Missionaries of Charity comprised his study, which was published in a 2003 book that was critical of Mother Teresa. Chatterjee censured her for encouraging a “cult of suffering” and a skewed, unfavorable portrayal of Calcutta, inflating the amount of work her mission accomplished, and abusing the resources and advantages at her disposal.
He said that following Mother Teresa’s passing in 1997, several of the hygienic issues he had previously criticized—like the reuse of needles—became better.
After serving as mayor of Calcutta from 2005 to 2010, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya claimed that Mother Teresa had “no significant impact on the poor of this city,” that the city was misrepresented by Mother Teresa and that illness was glorified rather than treated. The Bharatiya Janata Party, on the Hindu right, chastised Mother Teresa for her treatment of Christian Dalits, but in her final moments, they honored her and dispatched a delegate to her funeral. On the other hand, the government’s decision to give her a state funeral was challenged by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Secretary Giriraj Kishore accused her of favoring Christians and performing “secret baptisms” of the terminally ill, saying that “her first duty was to the Church and social service was incidental”. The claims were deemed “patently false” by the Indian weekly Frontline, which also noted that they had “made no impact on the public perception of her work, especially in Calcutta” in a front-page homage. While praising Teresa’s “selfless caring,” fearlessness, and enthusiasm, the tribute writer criticized Teresa for her public anti-abortion crusade and her assertion that she was not political.
According to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh head Mohan Bhagwat, a right-wing Hindu group, Mother Teresa’s goal was “to convert the person, who was being served, into a Christian” in February 2015. Bhagwat’s judgment was endorsed by former RSS spokesperson M. G. Vaidhya, and the group said that the media was “distorting facts about Bhagwat’s remarks”. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi, MP Derek O’Brien of the Trinamool Congress, and CPI politician Atul Anjan objected to Bhagwat’s remarks. During D. S. Satyaranjan’s registrarship, Senate of Serampore College (University), the nation’s first modern university, granted an honorary doctorate in 1991.
Somewhere else
In 1962, Mother Teresa was granted the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding in recognition of her efforts in South or East Asia. According to the reference, “The Board of Trustees recognizes her merciful cognizance of the abject poor of a foreign land, in whose service she has led a new congregation”. Mother Teresa had achieved international renown by the early 1970s. Malcolm Muggeridge’s 1969 BBC documentary Something Beautiful for God, which preceded the publication of his book of the same name in 1971, had propelled her to stardom. At the time, Muggeridge was going through his own spiritual journey.
The team had been using fresh, untested photographic film, therefore video taken in dim lighting, especially at the Home for the Dying, was deemed unlikely to be useable during production. The video was discovered to be exceptionally well-lit in England, and Muggeridge referred to Teresa’s contribution as a miracle of “divine light” According to other crew members, the cause was a novel variety of extremely sensitive Kodak film. Afterward, Muggeridge became a Catholic.
At this point, Mother Teresa started to be publicly honored within the Catholic community. In 1971, Pope Paul VI awarded her the first-ever Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in recognition of her efforts to promote peace, her work with the underprivileged, and her demonstration of Christian generosity. In 1976, she was granted the Pacem in Terris Award.
Teresa made quick progress toward sainthood after her passing.
In 1982, she was made an honorary Companion of the Order of Australia “for service to the community of Australia and humanity at large,” receiving recognition from both government and non-governmental organizations. A series of honors were conferred by the US and the UK, leading to the 1983 Order of Merit and the US honorary citizenship granted on November 16, 1996.
In 1994, Mother Teresa was awarded the Golden Honour of the Nation by her native Albania; nevertheless, there was controversy surrounding her acceptance of both the honor and the Haitian Legion of Honour. Mother Teresa faced criticism for her apparent backing of corrupt businessmen Charles Keating and Robert Maxwell, as well as the Duvaliers. She even addressed a letter to the judge in Keating’s trial, pleading for clemency.
Honorary degrees from universities in India and the West were awarded to her. Other civilian honors included the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975) and the Balzan Prize (1978) for advancing humanity, peace, and fraternity among peoples. Mother Teresa visited the University of Scranton in northern Pennsylvania in April 1976, and there she was presented with the La Storta Medal for Human Service by William J. Byron, the president of the university.
Reaching out to 4,500 people, she urged them to “know poor people in your own home and local neighborhood”, whether it was by providing food or just showing love and happiness. “The poor will help us grow in sanctity, for they are Christ in the guise of distress,” Mother Teresa went on.
As a thank you for her dedication and ministry to the ill and impoverished, the institution awarded Mother Teresa an honorary doctorate in social science in August 1987. Speaking to more than 4,000 students and Diocese of Scranton members, she shared her experience serving the “poorest of the poor” and urged them to “do small things with great love”.
In the annual Gallup survey of the most admired men and women, Mother Teresa was in the top 10 women eighteen times throughout her lifetime. She even won the poll many times in the 1980s and 1990s. She topped Gallup’s list of the 20th century’s Most Widely Admired People in 1999, handily outnumbering all other volunteers with their responses. She topped every significant demographic group with the exception of the extremely young.
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize was given to Mother Teresa in 1979 “for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace”. She declined the traditional ceremonial feast for laureates, requesting that the $192,00 cost be donated to the underprivileged in India and stating that material gains were only significant if they enabled her to assist the underprivileged throughout the world.
“What can we do to promote world peace?” was the question posed to Mother Teresa after she was awarded the prize. She said, “Go home and love your family.” in response. “Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove,” she stated, expanding on this issue in her Nobel talk.
Abortion was cited by Mother Teresa as “the greatest destroyer of peace today.” Since there is nothing between a mother who kills her own kid and me if I murder you and you kill me.”
After Mother Teresa was awarded the Peace Prize, Barbara Smoker of the secular humanist journal The Freethinker criticized her, claiming that money meant for addressing India’s issues had been diverted to Catholic moral teachings on abortion and contraception. Mother Teresa stated during the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China: “Yet we can destroy this gift of motherhood, especially by the evil of abortion, but also by thinking that other things like jobs or positions are more important than loving.”
Mother Teresa’s opposition to abortion and contraception has also drawn criticism from pro-choice organizations. “To criticize her for opposing abortion and contraception is to criticize her for not running a secular charity, which she never pretended to do,” writes Mark Woods in Christian Today.
In spite of receiving millions of dollars in donations, Mother Teresa’s clinics lacked access to adequate medical care, systematic diagnosis, adequate nutrition, and analgesics for patients in pain, according to a paper written by Canadian academics Serge Larivée, Geneviève Chénard, and Carole Sénéchal. The three academics concluded that Mother Teresa “believed the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross.” It was suggested that by building cutting-edge palliative care facilities, the extra funding may have improved the health of the city’s impoverished.
The missionary position: of Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995) and Hell’s Angel (1994) host and antitheist Christopher Hitchens, an English journalist, was among Mother Teresa’s most vocal critics. In a 2003 article, Hitchens wrote: “This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. Mother Teresa did not support the underprivileged. She was a poor person’s buddy. Suffering, according to her, is a gift from God. Her whole life was devoted to resisting the one effective treatment for poverty: empowering women and freeing them from forced reproduction akin to that of animals.”
He called her a hypocrite for deciding to receive cutting-edge care for her heart problem. According to Hitchens, “her intention was not to help people” and she misled contributors about the purposes of their donations. He remarked, “I found out from talking to her that she wasn’t trying to reduce poverty; instead, she was trying to increase the number of Catholics.” ‘I’m not a social worker,’ she declared. This isn’t the reason I do it. I carry it out for Christ. I carry it out for the church.
According to Navin B. Chawla, Mother Teresa’s intention was never to construct hospitals, but rather to offer a location where those who had been turned away “could at least die being comforted and with some dignity.” In response to those who criticize Mother Teresa, he also refutes the idea that she performed unethical conversions and claims that staff members forced her to undergo recurrent hospitalizations against her will. “Those who are quick to criticise Mother Teresa and her mission, are unable or unwilling to do anything to help with their own hands.”
The former Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity, Sister Mary Prema Pierick, similarly said that Mother Teresa’s homes were never meant to be hospitals’ replacements, but rather “homes for those not accepted in the hospital… But if they need hospital care, then we have to take them to the hospital, and we do that.” In addition, Sister Pierick refuted the notion that Mother Teresa intentionally fostered pain and maintained that the purpose of her organization was to lessen suffering.
Having visited her in Belfast in 1971, Fr. Des Wilson contended that “Mother Theresa was content to pick up the sad pieces left by a vicious political and economic system” and pointed out that her destiny differed greatly from that of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador. “Romero, who attacked the causes of misery as well as picking up the pieces, was shot in the head” at the same time that she accepted the Nobel Prize.
Mother Teresa maintained in 1994 that Jesuit priest Donald McGuire was not the victim of sexual assault as claimed. Mother Teresa’s defense of him was called into question when he was found guilty in 2006 of sexually abusing many youngsters.
Spiritual Existence
“Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others?” Pope John Paul II asked, analyzing her accomplishments and acts. She discovered it in prayer and in the quiet reflection on Jesus Christ—his Sacred Heart and Holy Face.” In private, Mother Teresa struggled for almost 50 years, to the end of her life, with her religious convictions. Mother Teresa bemoaned her lack of faith and raised serious concerns regarding the existence of God:
My religion is where? There is nothing except darkness and nothingness even deep below. […] Please pardon me, if there is a God. There is such a condemning emptiness that when I try to lift my thoughts to Heaven, those identical thoughts come back like sharp blades and damage my own soul.
Similar experiences of spiritual aridity were reported by other saints, such as Thérèse of Lisieux, the namesake of Teresa, who described it as a “night of nothingness.” These uncertainties, in James Langford’s opinion, were common and would not prevent canonization.
Mother Teresa spoke about a brief time of restored faith following 10 years of uncertainty. She was praying for Pope Pius XII at a funeral liturgy in 1958 when she felt freed from “the long darkness: that strange suffering.” But after five weeks, her spiritual aridity reappeared.
Over the course of 66 years, Mother Teresa corresponded with several confessors and superiors, including Jesuit priest Celeste van Exem, who served as her spiritual counselor from the Missionaries of Charity’s founding, and Archbishop Ferdinand Perier of Calcutta. She asked for her letters to be burned because she was afraid that “people will think more of me – less of Jesus.”
Still, the letters were collected in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Mother Teresa wrote, “Jesus has a very special love for you,” to Michael van der Peet, a spiritual companion. Regarding myself, however, the emptiness and stillness are so overwhelming that I gaze but do not see, listen but do not hear, and my mouth moves [in prayer] but does not speak. In addition, Please offer up prayers for me so that I may give Him complete control.”
Pope Benedict XVI used Mother Teresa’s life to illustrate one of the main points of his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est: “In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving service to our neighbor but is, in fact, the inexhaustible source of that service.” XVI made three references to Mother Teresa in the encyclical. She stated, “It is only by mental prayer and spiritual reading that we can cultivate the gift of prayer.”
Mother Teresa was impacted by Franciscan spirituality and revered Francis of Assisi, despite the fact that her order had nothing to do with the Franciscan orders. Every morning at Mass, during the thanksgiving following Communion, the Sisters of Charity say Saint Francis’ prayer. Many of their vows and their emphasis on ministry are also comparable. Francis placed a strong emphasis on chastity, poverty, obedience, and surrender to Christ. He spent a large portion of his life helping the underprivileged, especially lepers.
Canonization
Significance and Glorified
Following Mother Teresa’s passing in 1997, the Diocese of Calcutta nominated Brian Kolodiejchuk as postulator for the beatification process, which is the second of three processes leading to canonization. The Holy See started this procedure. He had to demonstrate that Mother Teresa’s virtue was heroic even if he claimed, “We didn’t have to prove that she was perfect or never made a mistake.” A total of 35,000 pages, or 76 papers, were provided by Kolodiejchuk. These were based on interviews with 113 witnesses who were asked to respond to 263 questions.
Documentation of a miracle brought about by the potential saint’s intercession is necessary for the canonization procedure. The recovery of an abdominal tumor in Indian lady Monica Besra in 2002 was acknowledged by the Vatican as a miracle, following the use of a locket with Teresa’s portrait.
Besra claimed that a light beam came from the image and that her malignant tumor was healed; yet, her husband and several of her medical team said that the tumor was completely removed by standard medical care. The cyst was brought on by TB, according to Ranjan Mustafi, who treated Besra and informed The New York Times that he had treated her. “It was not a miracle… During nine months to a year, she received medication.”
The husband of Besra claims, “My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle […] This miracle is a hoax.” Besra said that Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity had taken her medical documents, which included sonograms, medications, and doctor’s notes. Calls to Sister Betta and the office of Sister Nirmala, Teresa’s replacement as order leader, were unanswered, according to Time. Besra received medical care at Balurghat Hospital, where staff members claimed they were under duress to characterize her recovery as miraculous. A study of Besra’s medical records at the Department of Health in Calcutta was requested in February 2000 by Partho De, the then health minister of West Bengal.
Based on her extensive therapy, De said that there was nothing unique about her illness or recovery. He said that he had declined to provide the Vatican with the name of a medical professional who could attest to the miracle nature of Monica Besra’s recovery.
After Mother Teresa was declared a saint and beatified, the Vatican examined both known and unpublished critiques of her life and contributions. Speaking before the tribunal were Christopher Hitchens and Chatterjee, the author of The Final Verdict, a book that is critical of Mother Teresa; Congregation for the Causes of Saints officials said that the Congregation looked into the accusations made. The panel declared on April 21, 1999, that there was no barrier to Mother Teresa’s canonization. Some Catholic writers referred to her as a sign of contradiction as a result of the attacks on her. After being declared holy on October 19, 2003, Mother Teresa became known as “Blessed” among Catholics.
Canonization
The cure of a Brazilian man with numerous brain tumors in 2008 was recognized by Pope Francis, according to confirmation from the Vatican Press Office on December 17, 2015. The miracle was initially seen by the postulation (officials overseeing the cause) in July 2013, during the pope’s visit to Brazil for World Youth Day. A follow-up inquiry was conducted in Brazil from June 19–26, 2015, and was subsequently given to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which declared the investigation to be finished in a decree.
On September 4, 2016, in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Pope Francis canonized her. The event was watched by tens of thousands of people, including 1,500 homeless individuals from all around Italy and 15 government delegations. A week-long celebration of Mother Teresa’s canonization was announced in Skopje, her hometown, and it was broadcast live on the Vatican channel and streamed online. The Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta held a special Mass in India.
Co-Patron of the Archdiocese of Calcutta
Mother Teresa will be co-patron of the Calcutta Archdiocese during a Mass in the Cathedral of the Most Holy Rosary on September 6, 2017, Sister Mary Prema Pierick, Superior-General of the Missionaries of Charity, announced on September 4, 2017, during a celebration honoring the first anniversary of her canonization. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta’s leader, Archbishop Thomas D’Souza, announced on September 5, 2017, that Mother Teresa will be designated co-patron of the Diocese together with Francis Xavier. The decree designating Mary as the second patron saint of the archdiocese was read aloud by the local vicar general, Dominique Gomes, at a Mass celebrated in a cathedral on September 6, 2017, in front of around 500 people.
D’Souza and Giambattista Diquattro, the Vatican’s envoy to India, officiated the ceremony as well. Diquattro led the Mass and unveiled a bronze monument of Mother Teresa holding a child in the church.
In 1986, the Catholic Church named St. Francis Xavier Calcutta’s first patron saint.
Remainder and representations in mainstream media
The Missionaries of Charity operated 610 missions in 123 countries at the time of her death, with over 4,000 sisters and 300 members of an affiliated fraternity. These included soup kitchens, children’s and family counseling programs, orphanages, schools, hospices, and homes for those suffering with HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and TB. By the 1990s, there were more than a million coworkers supporting the Missionaries of Charity.
Honors
Mother Teresa is the patroness of several churches and has been honored by museums. Numerous structures, notably the international airport of Albania, have been named after her, along with highways and complexes. Albania observes Mother Teresa Day (Dita e Nënë Terezës) on September 5 as a public holiday. In her native Skopje, North Macedonia, the Memorial House of Mother Teresa opened its doors in 2009. In honor of her, Pristina, Kosovo’s Blessed Mother Teresa Cathedral bears her name. The local community was originally outraged by the removal of a historic high school building to make room for the new development, but the high school was eventually moved to a larger, new site.
It was dedicated on September 5, 2017, making it the second existing cathedral in Kosovo and the first dedicated to Mother Teresa.
The Tamil Nadu government founded Mother Teresa Women’s Institution in Kodaikanal as a public institution in 1984. The Puducherry government founded the Mother Teresa Postgraduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences in Pondicherry in 1999. The Mother Teresa Girls Home is managed by the nonprofit organization Sevalaya, which offers free food, clothes, housing, and education to underprivileged and orphaned girls living close to the neglected Tamil Nadu village of Kasuva. Numerous homages written by Navin Chawla, the biographer of Mother Teresa, have been published in Indian periodicals and newspapers. On August 26, 2010, Indian Railways unveiled the “Mother Express,” a brand-new train bearing Mother Teresa’s name in honor of the centennial of her birth.
Chief Minister M Karunanidhi led the Tamil Nadu government’s centennial festivities honoring Mother Teresa on December 4, 2010, in Chennai. The United Nations General Assembly has declared September 5, 2013, the anniversary of her passing, to be the International Day of Charity.
In the 2012 election of the Greatest Indian, Mother Teresa came in at number five according to Outlook India.
The Mother Teresa Museum is situated on Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida.
