Mother Teresa

Biography

Early life and family

Mother Teresa's given name was Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha) Bojaxhiu (Anjezë is a cognate of Agnes; Gonxhe means "flower bud" in Albanian). She was born on 26 August 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire (now the capital of North Macedonia). She was baptised in Skopje the day after her birth. She later considered 27 August, the day she was baptised, her "true birthday".

She was the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai). Her father, who was involved in Albanian-community politics in Ottoman Macedonia, was probably poisoned, an act attributed to Serbian agents, after he had visited Belgrade for a political meeting in 1919 when she was eight years old. He was born in Prizren (today in Kosovo), however, his family was from Mirdita (present-day Albania). Her mother may have been from a village near Gjakova, believed by her offspring to be Bishtazhin.According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, Anjezë was in her early years when she became fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life. Her resolve strengthened on 15 August 1928 as she prayed at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimages.

Anjezë left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English with the intent of becoming a missionary; English was the language of instruction of the Sisters of Loreto in India. She saw neither her mother nor her sister again. Her family lived in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to Tirana. During communist leader Enver Hoxha's rule, she was considered a dangerous agent of the Vatican. Despite multiple requests and despite the fact that many countries made requests on her behalf, she was denied a chance to see her family and was not granted the opportunity to see her mother and sister. Both of them died during Hoxha's rule, and Anjezë herself was only able to visit Albania five years after the communist regime collapsed. Dom Lush Gjergji in his book "Our Mother Teresa" describes one of her trips to the embassy where she was crying as she was leaving the building, saying:Dear God, I can understand and accept that I should suffer, but it is so hard to understand and accept why my mother has to suffer. In her old age she has no other wish than to see us one last time.She arrived in India in 1929 and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas, where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent. She took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries; because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, she opted for its Spanish spelling of Teresa.

Missionaries of Charity

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, MC, founder of her congregation of priests, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, 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. Mother 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, Calcutta, before she began tending to the poor and hungry.

Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister. Mother 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.

On 7 October 1950, Mother Teresa received Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity. In her words, it would care for "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".

International charity

Mother Teresa said, "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."

Fluent in five languages – Bengali, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, English and Hindi – she made occasional trips outside India for humanitarian reasons. These included, in 1971, a visit with four of her sisters, to Troubles-era Belfast. Her suggestion that the conditions she had found justified an ongoing mission was the cause of some embarrassment. Reportedly under pressure from senior clergy, who believed "the missionary traffic should be in other direction", and despite local welcome and support, she and her sisters abruptly left the city in 1973.

At the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982, Mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the hospital to evacuate the young patients.

When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the late 1980s, Mother Teresa expanded her efforts to Communist countries which had rejected the Missionaries of Charity. She began dozens of projects, undeterred by criticism of her stands against abortion and divorce: "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work". She visited Armenia after the 1988 earthquake and met with Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov.

Abortion-rights groups did criticize Mother Teresa's stance against abortion and contraception. Mother Teresa promoted the Catholic moral rejection of all abortion and contraception. She singled out abortion as "the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child – what is left for me to kill you and you kill me – there is nothing between." At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Mother Teresa said: "[W]e 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 travelled to assist the hungry in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia. In 1991 she returned to Albania for the first time, opening a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana.

Declining health and death

Mother Teresa had a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while she was visiting Pope John Paul II. Following a second attack in 1989, she received a pacemaker. In 1991, after a bout of pneumonia in Mexico, she had additional heart problems. Although Mother Teresa offered to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity, in a secret ballot the sisters of the congregation voted for her to stay, and she agreed to continue.

In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell, breaking her collarbone, and four months later she had malaria and heart failure. Although she underwent heart surgery, her health was clearly declining. According to the Archbishop of Calcutta Henry Sebastian D'Souza, he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism (with her permission) when she was first hospitalised with cardiac problems because he thought she might be under attack by the devil. On 13 March 1997, Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September.

Mother Teresa lay in repose in an open casket in St Thomas, Calcutta, for a week before her funeral. She received a state funeral from the Indian government in gratitude for her service to the poor of all religions in the country. Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, the Pope's representative, delivered the homily at the service. Mother Teresa's death was mourned in the secular and religious communities. Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif called her "a rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes. Her lifelong devotion to the care of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to our humanity." According to former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, "She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world."

Recognition and reception

India

From the Indian government, under the name of Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa was issued a diplomatic passport. She received the Padma Shri in 1962 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969. She later received other Indian awards, including the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award) in 1980. In 1991 the country's first modern University, Senate of Serampore College (University) awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Divinity during registrarship of D. S. Satyaranjan. Mother Teresa's official biography, by Navin Chawla, was published in 1992. In Calcutta, she is worshipped as a deity by some Hindus.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, the government of India issued a special ₹5 coin (the amount of money Mother Teresa had when she arrived in India) on 28 August 2010. President Pratibha Patil said, "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."

Indian views of Mother Teresa are not uniformly favourable. Aroup Chatterjee, a physician born and raised in Calcutta who was an activist in the city's slums for years around 1980 before moving to the UK, said that he "never even saw any nuns in those slums". His research, involving more than 100 interviews with volunteers, nuns and others familiar with the Missionaries of Charity, was described in a 2003 book critical of Mother Teresa. Chatterjee criticized her for promoting a "cult of suffering" and a distorted, negative image of Calcutta, exaggerating work done by her mission and misusing funds and privileges at her disposal. According to him, some of the hygiene problems he had criticized (such as the reuse of needles) improved after Mother Teresa's death in 1997.

Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, mayor of Calcutta from 2005 to 2010, said that "she had no significant impact on the poor of this city", glorified illness instead of treating it and misrepresented the city: "No doubt there was poverty in Calcutta, but it was never a city of lepers and beggars, as Mother Teresa presented it." On the Hindu right, the Bharatiya Janata Party clashed with Mother Teresa over the Christian Dalits but praised her in death and sent a representative to her funeral. Vishwa Hindu Parishad, however, opposed the government decision to grant her a state funeral. Secretary Giriraj Kishore said that "her first duty was to the Church and social service was incidental", accusing her of favouring Christians and conducting "secret baptisms" of the dying. In a front-page tribute, the Indian fortnightly Frontline dismissed the charges as "patently false" and said that they had "made no impact on the public perception of her work, especially in Calcutta". Praising her "selfless caring", energy and bravery, the author of the tribute criticised Teresa's public campaign against abortion and her claim to be non-political.

Elsewhere

Mother Teresa received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, given for work in South or East Asia, in 1962. According to its citation, "The Board of Trustees recognises her merciful cognisance of the abject poor of a foreign land, in whose service she has led a new congregation". By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa was an international celebrity. She had been catapulted to fame via Malcolm Muggeridge's 1969 BBC documentary, Something Beautiful for God, before he released a 1971 book of the same name. Muggeridge was undergoing a spiritual journey of his own at the time. During filming, footage shot in poor lighting (particularly at the Home for the Dying) was thought unlikely to be usable by the crew; the crew had been using new, untested photographic film. In England, the footage was found to be extremely well-lit and Muggeridge called it a miracle of "divine light" from Teresa. Other crew members said that it was due to a new type of ultra-sensitive Kodak film. Muggeridge later converted to Catholicism.

Around this time, the Catholic world began to honour Mother Teresa publicly. Pope Paul VI gave her the inaugural Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, commending her work with the poor, her display of Christian charity and her efforts for peace. She received the Pacem in Terris Award in 1976. After her death, Teresa progressed rapidly on the road to sainthood.

She was honoured by governments and civilian organisations and appointed an honorary Companion of the Order of Australia in 1982 "for service to the community of Australia and humanity at large". The United Kingdom and the United States bestowed a number of awards, culminating in the Order of Merit in 1983 and honorary citizenship of the United States on 16 November 1996. Mother Teresa's Albanian homeland gave her the Golden Honour of the Nation in 1994, but her acceptance of this and the Haitian Legion of Honour was controversial. Mother Teresa was criticised for implicitly supporting the Duvaliers and corrupt businessmen such as Charles Keating and Robert Maxwell; she wrote to the judge of Keating's trial requesting clemency.

Universities in India and the West granted her honorary degrees. Other civilian awards included the Balzan Prize for promoting humanity, peace and brotherhood among peoples (1978) and the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975). In April 1976, Mother Teresa visited the University of Scranton in northeastern Pennsylvania, where she received the La Storta Medal for Human Service from university president William J. Byron. She challenged an audience of 4,500 to "know poor people in your own home and local neighbourhood", feeding others or simply spreading joy and love. Mother Teresa continued: "The poor will help us grow in sanctity, for they are Christ in the guise of distress". In August 1987, Mother Teresa received an honorary doctor of social science degree from the university in recognition of her service and her ministry to help the destitute and sick. She spoke to over 4,000 students and members of the Diocese of Scranton about her service to the "poorest of the poor", telling them to "do small things with great love".

Controversies

Defence of priest accused of molestation

In 1994, Mother Teresa argued that the sexual abuse allegations against Jesuit priest Donald McGuire, her confessor, were untrue. She stated her "confidence and trust in Fr. McGuire" and pushed for him to be reinstated to the ministry. McGuire was reinstated, but in 2006 he was tried and convicted for sexually molesting multiple children in the 1960s. In 2009 he was convicted of further charges of molestation and sentenced to 25 years in prison. When Mother Teresa's defence of McGuire later came to light, it prompted substantial criticism.

Spiritual life

Analysing her deeds and achievements, Pope John Paul II said: "Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart." Privately, Mother Teresa experienced doubts and struggle in her religious beliefs which lasted nearly 50 years, until the end of her life. Mother Teresa expressed grave doubts about God's existence and pain over her lack of faith:

Where is my faith? Even deep down [...] there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. [...] If there be God – please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.

Other saints (including Teresa's namesake Thérèse of Lisieux, who called it a "night of nothingness") had similar experiences of spiritual dryness. According to James Langford, these doubts were typical and would not be an impediment to canonisation.

After ten years of doubt, Mother Teresa described a brief period of renewed faith. After Pope Pius XII's death in 1958, she was praying for him at a requiem Mass when she was relieved of "the long darkness: that strange suffering." Five weeks later her spiritual dryness returned.

Mother Teresa wrote many letters to her confessors and superiors over a 66-year period, most notably to Calcutta Archbishop Ferdinand Perier and Jesuit priest Celeste van Exem (her spiritual advisor since the formation of the Missionaries of Charity). She requested that her letters be destroyed, concerned that "people will think more of me – less of Jesus."

The correspondence was nevertheless compiled in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Mother Teresa wrote to spiritual confidant Michael van der Peet, "Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see – listen and do not hear – the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak. [...] I want you to pray for me – that I let Him have [a] free hand."

Canonization

Miracle and beatification

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, the Holy See began the process of beatification (the second of three steps towards canonization) and Brian Kolodiejchuk was appointed postulator by the Diocese of Calcutta. Although he said, "We didn't have to prove that she was perfect or never made a mistake", he had to prove that Mother Teresa's virtue was heroic. Kolodiejchuk submitted 76 documents, totalling 35,000 pages, which were based on interviews with 113 witnesses who were asked to answer 263 questions.

The process of canonisation requires the documentation of a miracle resulting from the intercession of the prospective saint. In 2002 the Vatican recognised as a miracle the healing of a tumour in the abdomen of Monica Besra, an Indian woman, after the application of a locket containing Teresa's picture. According to Besra, a beam of light emanated from the picture and her cancerous tumour was cured; her husband and some of her medical staff, however, said that conventional medical treatment eradicated the tumour. Ranjan Mustafi, who told The New York Times he had treated Besra, said that the cyst was caused by tuberculosis: "It was not a miracle ... She took medicines for nine months to one year." Even though Monica believed in the miracle, Besra's husband did not: "My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle [...] This miracle is a hoax." Besra said that her medical records, including sonograms, prescriptions and physicians' notes, were confiscated by Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity. According to Time, calls to Sister Betta and the office of Sister Nirmala (Teresa's successor as head of the order) produced no comment. Officials at Balurghat Hospital, where Besra sought medical treatment, said that they were pressured by the order to call her cure miraculous.

During Mother Teresa's beatification and canonisation, the Vatican studied published and unpublished criticism of her life and work. Christopher Hitchens and Chatterjee (author of The Final Verdict, a book critical of Mother Teresa) spoke to the tribunal; according to Vatican officials, the allegations raised were investigated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The group found no obstacle to Mother Teresa's canonisation, and issued its nihil obstat on 21 April 1999. Because of the attacks on her, some Catholic writers called her a sign of contradiction. Mother Teresa was beatified on 19 October 2003 and was known by Catholics as "Blessed".

Canonization

On 17 December 2015, the Vatican Press Office confirmed that Pope Francis recognised a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa: the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours back in 2008. The miracle first came to the attention of the postulation (officials managing the cause) during the events of World Youth Day 2013 when the pope was in Brazil that July. A subsequent investigation took place in Brazil from 19–26 June 2015 which was later transferred to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who issued a decree recognizing the investigation to be completed.

Pope Francis canonised her at a ceremony on 4 September 2016 in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. Tens of thousands of people witnessed the ceremony, including 15 government delegations and 1,500 homeless people from across Italy. It was televised live on the Vatican channel and streamed online; Skopje, Mother Teresa's hometown, announced a week-long celebration of her canonisation. In India, a special Mass was celebrated by the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.

Co-Patron of Calcutta Archdiocese

On 4 September 2017, during a celebration honouring the 1st anniversary of her canonisation, Sister Mary Prema Pierick, Superior-General of the Missionaries of Charity, announced that Mother Teresa would be made the co-patron of the Calcutta Archdiocese during a Mass in the Cathedral of the Most Holy Rosary on 6 September 2017. On 5 September 2017, Archbishop Thomas D'Souza, who serves as head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta, confirmed that Mother Teresa would be named co-patron of the Calcutta Diocese, alongside Francis Xavier. On 6 September 2017, about 500 people attended the Mass at a cathedral where Dominique Gomes, the local Vicar General, read the decree instituting her as the second patron saint of the archdiocese. The ceremony was also presided over by D'Souza and the Vatican's ambassador to India, Giambattista Diquattro, who lead the Mass and inaugurated a bronze statue in the church of Mother Teresa carrying a child.

The Catholic Church declared St. Francis Xavier the first patron saint of Calcutta in 1986.

Legacy and depictions in popular culture

At the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters and an associated brotherhood of 300 members operating 610 missions in 123 countries. These included hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counselling programmes, orphanages and schools. The Missionaries of Charity were aided by co-workers numbering over one million by the 1990s.

Commemorations

Mother Teresa has been commemorated by museums and named the patroness of a number of churches. She has had buildings, roads and complexes named after her, including Albania's international airport. Mother Teresa Day (Dita e Nënë Terezës), 5 September, is a public holiday in Albania. In 2009, the Memorial House of Mother Teresa was opened in her hometown of Skopje, North Macedonia. The Cathedral of Blessed Mother Teresa in Pristina, Kosovo, is named in her honour. The demolition of a historic high school building to make way for the new construction initially sparked controversy in the local community, but the high school was later relocated to a new, more spacious campus. Consecrated on 5 September 2017, it became the first cathedral in Mother Teresa's honour and the second extant one in Kosovo.

Mother Teresa Women's University, in Kodaikanal, was established in 1984 as a public university by the government of Tamil Nadu. The Mother Teresa Postgraduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences, in Pondicherry, was established in 1999 by the government of Puducherry. The charitable organisation Sevalaya runs the Mother Teresa Girls Home, providing poor and orphaned girls near the underserved village of Kasuva in Tamil Nadu with free food, clothing, shelter and education. A number of tributes by Mother Teresa's biographer, Navin Chawla, have appeared in Indian newspapers and magazines. Indian Railways introduced the "Mother Express", a new train named after Mother Teresa, on 26 August 2010 to commemorate the centenary of her birth. The Tamil Nadu government organised centenary celebrations honouring Mother Teresa on 4 December 2010 in Chennai, headed by chief minister M Karunanidhi. Beginning on 5 September 2013, the anniversary of her death has been designated the International Day of Charity by the United Nations General Assembly.

In 2012, Mother Teresa was ranked number 5 in Outlook India's poll of The Greatest Indian.

Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida, is home to the Mother Teresa Museum.

In art

Film and literature

Mother Teresa is the subject of a 1969 BBC documentary film and 1971 book, Something Beautiful for God, both undertaken by agnostic turned Christian Malcolm Muggeridge. The film has been credited with drawing the Western world's attention to Mother Teresa.

Christopher Hitchens' 1994 documentary, Hell's Angel, argues that Mother Teresa urged the poor to accept their fate; the rich are portrayed as favoured by God. It was the precursor of Hitchens' essay, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

Mother of The Century (2001) and Mother Teresa (2002) are short documentary films, about the life and work of Mother Teresa among the poor of India, directed by Amar Kumar Bhattacharya. They were produced by the Films Division of the Government of India.

Mother Teresa: No Greater Love (2022) is a documentary film featuring unusual access to institutional archives and how her vision to serve Christ among the poor is being implemented through the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa appeared in Bible Ki Kahaniyan, an Indian Christian television series based on the Bible which aired on DD National during the early 1990s. She introduced some of the episodes, laying down the importance of the Bible's message.

Geraldine Chaplin played Mother Teresa in Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor, which received a 1997 Art Film Festival award.

She was played by Olivia Hussey in a 2003 Italian television miniseries, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Re-released in 2007, it received a CAMIE award.

Mother Teresa was played by Juliet Stevenson in the 2014 film The Letters, which was based on her letters to Vatican priest Celeste van Exem.

Mother Teresa & Me (or Kavita & Teresa), a 2022 film by Indian-Swiss director Kamal Musale showcases her work among the poor and needy of Calcutta and the legacy and inspiration she has left behind. She was portrayed by Jacqueline Fritschi-Cornaz in the film.