FIRST YEARS
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the future Mother Theresa, was born on the 26th August 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia, into a Catholic family of Albanian origin. The traditions and culture of Albania will condition Mother Theresa’s life, As a teenager she was busy with the parish activity and in 1928 she enters the Convent of Loreto at Rathfarnam (Dublin) Ireland, where she receives the name of Theresa.

ARRIVAL IN CALCUTTA
On the 6th January 1929 she is sent to Calcutta where she becomes a nun of Loreto on the 24th may 1937; from that day onwards she is called Mother Theresa. In the thirties and forties she teaches at St Mary’s School. On the 10th September 1946, on the train between Calcutta and Darjeeling she receives what she defines as “a call within a call” which brought to the birth of the Missionaries of Charity, Sisters, Brothers, priests and Collaborators. The contents of this inspiration is in the aim of the new institute “Work for the Salvation and the Sanctification of the Poorest among the Poor”. On the 7th October 1950 the new congregation of the missionaries of Charity was officially founded as a religious order for the diocese of Calcutta.

FROM THE 50’S TO THE 80’S
During the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, Mother Theresa brought the work of the missionaries to all of India. On the 1st February 1965, Pope Paul VI gave to the congregation the “Decretum Landis” rising it to the pontifical right. The first missionary house opened outside Calcutta was in Cocorote, in Venezuela in 1965. The congregation expanded to Europe (in the outskirts of Rome, at Tor Fiscale) and in Africa (at Tabora in Tanzania) in 1968. From the end of the sixties to 1980, Mother Theresa opened foundations in Australia, in the Middle East and in North America and the first novitiate outside of Calcutta, in London.

THE NOBEL PRIZE
In 1979 she received the Nobel for peace and in the same year there were already 150 missionary houses.
The missionaries of charity reached the communist countries in 1979, opening a foundation in Zagabria in Croatia and in 1980 in East Berlin. They continued to expand the mission houses in the 80’s and 90’s opening houses in almost all the communist countries, 15 of which in the ex Soviet Union. However, Mother Theresa was never able to open any foundation in China. In October 1985, Mother Theresa spoke at the General Assembly of the United nations. On Christmas Eve of the same year she opened in New York “The Gift of Love”, the first house for Aids victims, to which a lot more followed.

At the end of the 80’s and during the 90’s, even if she had constant health problems, Mother Theresa continued to open new houses all over the world to save the poor and those people hit by calamities. New communities were founded in South Africa, Albania, Cuba and Iraq, torn by the war. In 1997 the nuns were 4000, present in 123 countries of the world in about 600 foundations.

DEATH
At half past nine on the evening of the 5th of September 1997, Mother Theresa died in Calcutta in her mother house. The body was transferred to St Thomas Church near the Convent of Loreto, exactly where she had arrived 69 years before. Hundreds of thousands of people from every social class and religion paid homage to her from India and abroad. On the 13th of September, Heads of State, prime Ministers, Queens and invited guests from all over the world participated to her funeral ceremony.

Young Madre Teresa