Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Macedonia. She was the youngest of three children, and as a young girl, she was called to serve God as a missionary nun.
At 17, she joined the Sisters of Loretto, and went to teach in a high school at Calcutta. After she caught tuberculosis, she was sent to Darjeeling, but on the train, she received an order from God to leave the convent and live among the poor.
The Vatican gave Mother Teresa permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto, and she began working with the poor and sick in the slums of Calcutta, and teaching poor children. A year later, some of her former students began helping her, and they took in men, women and children.
In 1950, Mother Teresa established the Missionaries of Charity, and in 1952, they were given a house from the Calcutta government to continue caring for the city’s poor. The mission grew to 500 homes around the world, caring for AIDs sufferers, prostitutes, battered women and orphans.
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997. She was beatified on October 19, 2003, only 6 years after her death.
