Who Is St. Teresa of Calcutta?
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu is born in 1910 in
Skopje, the Republic of Macedonia, which
then was part of the Ottoman Empire. Her
parents are devout Catholics of Albanian
heritage.
Her father dies when Agnes is eight years
old. Her mother instills in Agnes a deep
respect for the poor.
On a pilgrimage at age twelve to Church of
the Black Madonna in Letnica, Kosovo, she
discerns a calling to religious life. Six years
later, she joins the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland,
taking the name of Mary Teresa.
In 1931, she is sent to Calcutta, India, to
teach at a Catholic high school for poor girls.
She makes her final vows in 1937, adopting
the customary title of “Mother.”
While traveling by train in 1946, Mother
Teresa receives her “call within a call.” Christ
asks her to lay aside teaching and serve the
destitute of Calcutta, “the unwanted, unloved,
uncared for,” in her words.
She receives approval to found a religious
community, the Missionaries of Charity, in
1950. Their habit is the sari, a garment worn
by poor Indian women.
During the 1950s and 60s, Mother opens
schools, homes for the dying, orphanages,
nursing homes, medical clinics, even a leper
colony. She expands her work internationally,
including communist Cuba, East Germany, and
the Soviet Union.
Mother Teresa receives the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1979. “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace
today is abortion,” she says at her Nobel
lecture.
Mother Teresa dies in 1997, receiving a state
funeral in India. She is beatified in 2003
by Pope John Paul II (the customary waiting
period is waived). Pope Francis canonizes her
on September 4, 2016.
The Missionaries of Charity are now
established in 130 countries, numbering
around four thousands sisters.
4
Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Fall 2016
MOTHER TERESA (June 21, 1985)
Long after you depart
Your memory leaves behind
An impression on my heart
One more constant than the time
More heavenly than the Chartres
Deeper than any river
A holy flame to warm a shiver.
–Mark Latkovic
Moral and Social Virtues
St. Mother Teresa had many virtues, natural and supernatural.
The evangelical virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience—yes;
the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love—of course. But she
also had acquired the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage—especially courage.
How many times would we read that Mother Teresa had spoken truth to power, whether at the National Prayer Breakfast with
powerful politicians present or some other gathering of the rich
and mighty? What was usually mere cliché or rhetoric with many
people was reality with her. She was fearless in denouncing injustice of any kind always and everywhere, and proclaiming essentially (what would be called) the “gospel of life” against the “culture of
death”—even before St. Pope John Paul II used that language in his
1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).
Her many virtues should not be thought of as only a matter of
concern for her own personal moral and spiritual perfection. On
the contrary, this holy woman demonstrated how personal virtue
leads to social virtue and social virtue, in turn, helps reinforce
(and even form) personal virtue.