If asked to name a Missionary, probably the first person to spring to most people’s mind is Mother Teresa.
For more than 45 years, she ministered to the poor, orphaned, sick and dying and her work has been praised by many organisations and governments.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on 26th August 1910 in Macedonia to a family of Albanian descent. Even at a very young age, she felt the call of God and knew she wanted to be a Missionary and spread the word of Christ.
When she was eighteen years old, she left her family home in Macedonia and travelled to Dublin to join the “Sisters of Loreto”, who were a community of nuns with various missions across India. After only a few months’ training she was sent to India where she took her initial vows as a nun.
Between 1931 and 1948 Mother Teresa taught at a catholic school in Calcutta but was so horrified by the poverty and suffering that she witnessed on the streets outside of the convent that in 1948 she sought permission from her superiors to leave the school and devote her time to working with the poorest of the poor in the Calcutta. Despite the lack of funding, she started an open-air school for the children living in the slums and very soon, financial support started to come her way.
In October 1950, she started her own order, “The Missionaries of Charity”, whose main aim was to look after those people who nobody else was prepared to. By the 1970′s she was recognised across the world as an advocate for the poor and in 1979 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity continued to expand and at the time of her death in September 1997, it was operating 610 missions in a total of 123 countries, including orphanages and schools, soup kitchens, family counselling programs and hospices and homes for people with leprosy, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. She dies on 5th September 1997.
On the 100th anniversary of her birth in 2010 Mother Teresa was honoured around the world for her tireless work and dedication.