Biography of Bharat Ratna “Mother Teresa” complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Marry Teresa Bojaxhiu

(Mother Teresa) 

Mother Teresa is an exemplary person in the service of the humanity. She gave up everything “totally to God and the poorest in serving the poorest of the poor”. She is a Roman Catholic nun renowned and revered for her work among the poor and sick in India.

Mother Teresa was born of Albanian parents in Skopje, Yugoslavia, on August 27, 1910. Her original name is Agnes Gomxha Bojaxhiu. She lived in Skopje. Her father had a grocery store in Skopje. Teresa decided to become a nun at the age of twelve. In 1928, at the age of eighteen, she left home to become a nun and to train as a teacher. She went first to Ireland to join a religious order, and, there she joined the Irish Order of the Sisters of Loreto. Soon she sailed for India.

Teresa came to India on November 28, 1928, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling. In January 1929, she joined as a Geography teacher at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta and later became its Principal. She adopted her name—Teresa—in 1931. The year 1946 was a turning point in her life. It was September 10, 1946, when she was going up to Darjeeling for her yearly retreat that she had a call from within that she should give up everything and give her life totally to God and the poorest in serving the poorest of the poor. “It’s God’s desire that you would leave the convent and reach out to a larger field of activity. He has chosen you to play a more vital role. You are His instrument and He wants to work through you to bring solace and comfort to those who have lost faith in life, in mankind, in God too. You shall bring hope to them, reduce their agony, render self-less service and reassure faith of God in them.”

She chose to work in the slums of the over-crowded city of Calcutta and to serve the destitute. Teresa sought Pope’s permission to leave the convent and start her challenging work in the Calcutta slums. Pope accorded her permission in 1948.

Mother Teresa had a short training course in nursing from the Medical Mission Sisters at Patna. In December 1948, at Creek Street, in Calcutta, she opened her first home and her first school for slum children. It was the period when she became an Indian citizen.

Later Teresa sought permission from the Pope to set up her own Religious Order, and, she founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, dedicated to helping the poor. Those who join her Order take the vows of Poverty, Chastity, Obedience and Free Service to the Poor. She won many adherents to her Order and in 1950 they were permitted by the Pope to wear saris as their habits. So, she and her Indian nuns wore saris (Indian dress).

The Order, under Mother Teresa, organised schools and dispensaries as well as centres for the aged, dying, blind, crippled and lepers. She started a leprosarium in Calcutta in 1957. A leper colony was built by the Order near Asansol. Mother opened a Centre in Venezuela in 1965, in Sri Lanka in 1967, in Rome in 1968, in Australia in 1969, in Jordan in 1970, in Vietnam, Lima in Peru in 1973, in Sicily and in New Guinea in 1977. Approximately 700 nuns belonged to the Order in the early 1970s, working in 60 centres in Calcutta and more than 70 centres around the world.

For her work among the poor, Mother Teresa was awarded the padmashri (Lord of the Lotus) by the Government of India in April 1962. In August 1962, she was awarded the Magsa vsay Award. In 1964, during Pope Paul VI’s visit to India, she was given his limousine which she raffled to raise money for her leper colony. In 1968 she was requested by the Pope to found a home in Rome and in1971 was awarded the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize by Pope Paul. In October 1971, she got John F. Kennedy International Award. On October 29, 1971, the Catholic University of America in Washington conferred the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris Causa). Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding was given to her on November 14, 1972. In 1973 she was given the Templeton Foundation Prize, Australian High Commissioner Peter Courtis presented Teresa with the insignia of the Order of the British Empire in 1978.

The 1979 winner of the Noble Peace Prize, Mother Teresa was the third Indian citizen to bag a Noble Prize. India conferred its highest award Bharat Ratna on her in 1980 as a mark of recognition of her services for the poor and the destitute. In 1983, Queen Elizabeth conferred on her the Order of Merit

Mother Teresa was honoured by the world famous Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh with its highest honour, the Award of Fellowship of the Royal College, at an impressive ceremony in New Delhi on February 23, 1991.

“I am unworthy of this great gift. But I accept it for the glory of the God and for our people,” the Mother said after accepting honour. Dressed in her well-known blue-bordered white sari and a blue sweater, the Mother signed the Fellow Poll before accepting the gown and a diploma with folded hands.

She said the medical vocation was a gift of God. “He has given you his love, his healing power… You have been chosen to help those who suffer and are helpless. That is why a doctor’s vocation is sacred.”

The Mother asked the doctors to treat the poor and the needy as “they too have been created to be loved to love. They are the children of the God. They come to you with so much expectations.”

She said abortion was evil and a “terrible killing”. Each one of us, even the little unborn child, are created for greater things. “So preserve life, protect life,” she told the gathering of top surgeons from India and abroad. ‘Teach the people to love life which is a gift of God. Teach the people to love and to be loved”.

Talking about he.. experience in Calcutta, the Mother said about 54,000 people were brought to her Home for the dying where “many died a beautiful death”. Narrating one moving incident, she said: “Once I picked up a man covered with worms. He did not curse about his fate. He said, “I lived like an animal in the streets. I am now dying like an angel. That’s why such people expect so much from you who have been blessed by the God.”