Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), was an Albanian Roman Catholic nun who started the Missionaries of Charity and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work.^[2] For over forty years, she cared for poor, sick, orphaned, and dying people in Calcutta (Kolkata), India. She was guided in part by the ideals of Saint Francis of Assisi. She was born in Skopje, Macedonia, and died in Calcutta.

Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Born	(1910-08-26)26 August 1910 Skopje, Ottoman Empire
Died	5 September 1997(1997-09-05) (aged 87) Calcutta, India
Occupation(s)	Roman Catholic nun, humanitarian[1]

As the Missionaries of Charity grew under her leadership, they expanded their ministry to other countries. By the 1970s Mother Teresa was well known internationally as an advocate for the poor and helpless. This was due in part to a movie and book called Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge.

Mother Teresa strongly opposed abortion. She once said: "The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me?".^[3]

Following her death, Pope John Paul II first beatified Mother Teresa. Then on 4 September 2016, in a ceremony at Saint Peter's Church in Vatican City, he named her a saint. He also gave her the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.^[4][5]

Saint Mother Teresa received many awards for her work. These included the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award) in 1980.

Criticism

Both before and after her death, Mother Teresa received criticism, especially in recent years as debate about abortion grew.

In 1995 Christopher Hitchens wrote a very critical book about Mother Teresa called The Missionary Position.^[6] In the book, he argued that instead of trying to help the poor, Mother Teresa encouraged them to endure pain and continue suffering.^[7][8] He also suggested that she opposed ending poverty and raising women's social status.^[9][10] Later, in a 2003 article for Slate, Hitchens wrote: "Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God".^[11]

Related pages

• Tirana International Airport Nënë Tereza, named after her.