A brief biography
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on 26 August 1910 and baptised on 27 August 1910 in the town of Skopje, Macedonia. However, she always wrote her birthday as 27 August because to her, the day of her baptism was always more important than the day of her birth.
Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor and destitute around the world. She spent many years teaching in India, where she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation devoted to helping those in great need.
After several years of deteriorating health, where she suffered from heart, lung and kidney problems, Mother Teresa died aged 87 on September 5 1997.
She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on
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As a girl, she sang in the local Sacred Heart choir and was often asked to sing solos. They often did a pilgrimage to the Church of the Black Madonna in Letnice. When she was 12 she felt her first calling to a religious life.
When Agnes turned 18, she found her true calling as a nun. She left home for good to enrol herself at the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), which is also called Sisters of Loreto, Ireland. It was there that she first received the name Sister Mary Teresa after St Therese of Lisieux.
A year later in May 1931, she travelled on to Darjeeling India, where she made her First Profession of Vows. Afterwards she was sent to Calcutta, where she was assigned to teach at Saint Mary's High School for Girls, a school run by the Loreto Sisters where she taught girls from the city's poorest families. Sister Teresa learned to speak both Bengali and Hindi fluently and she taught geography and history. She dedicated this period in her life to improve the poverty rate through
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As was the custom for Loreto nuns, she took on the title of "Mother" upon making her final vows. So it was then she became known as Mother Teresa. After that she still continued to teach at Saint Mary's, and in 1944 she became the school's principal.
Her second calling came on 10 September 1946 and forever transformed her life. As she was riding the train from Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills Christ spoke to her and told her to abandon her teaching and work in the slums of Calcutta.
She received 6 months basic medical training and then went out into the slums of Calcutta. She had a specific goal which was to aid the unwanted, the unloved and the uncared
When she returned to America she needed to support her children so she opened a girl’s school in Boston, and made religion a part of the school. After a few years the archbishop asked Elizabeth to open a girls’ school in Emmitsburg, Maryland. This is when she decided to become a nun (1809). She didn’t go along, 2 of her daughters and sister-in-law came with here to start the school and they became the American Sisters of Charity and in 1810 Elizabeth become Mother Seton.
At age 12, she felt a strong calling to lead a religious life. She decided that she would become a nun and a missionary(Mother Teresa Biography). At age 18, she joined the Sisters of Loretto in Ireland, where she picked the name Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Mother Teresa of Calcutta). She sailed to India just six weeks later to become a teacher(Blessed Mother Teresa). For 17 years she taught at the school before she experienced her “call within a call”. While riding a train to a retreat, Christ spoke to her. According to Mother Teresa biography, Christ said, "I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children. "You are I know the most incapable person—weak and sinful but just because you are that—I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?". Mother Teresa could not leave her vows without official permission, and it took about a year and a half until she was free to visit the slums of Calcutta(Mother Teresa
In the time of Catalina, all women had the duty to get into the convent and become a nun. So she was put in a convent when she was at the age of five, then she had herself becoming a novice. However, she decided to leave the convent after she got into a fight with a
taught herself to read and write in multiple languages. She chose to become a nun “to have no fixed occupation
She visited the Benedictine Nuns’ Monastery of Santa Lucia to find a peaceful place and to see the nuns that she admired. She had her first communion and felt a spiritual nourishment here. She became very wise for her age and her lectures on compassion and love brought her companions to tears. These would later lead to her mission of becoming the co-founder of the Pious Teachers. Cardinal Marc Anthony Barbarigo came to Corneto for his priestly visit. He left an impact on Saint Lucy Filippini; she followed him to a small Italian town called Montefiascone. When Cardinal Marc’s plans were in progress she had a spiritual connection with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
She lived a holy life spreading God’s teachings to young girls. After a life of hard work and dedication her beliefs
She was born into a poor but holy family and was a servant from the age 12 to a rich family who lived in Lucca, Italy. She found time everyday to attend mass and recite her prayers. Then the people who gave her jobs were upset of the gifts of food she gave to the poor, then after a while they were won over by her kindness and became friends with her. Her employers then gave her free rein over her schedule as being a servant so she used that time to visit those who were sick and in prison.
Saint Agnes of Bohemia shares her feast day with my birthday; March 2. She was was born in Prague to her parents, the king and the queen of Bohemia. She had one brother and was a very religious kid. When she was very young, she made her decision of entering the religious life. She later declined a marriage and decided that God was more important than a marriage. God was the biggest part in Saint Agnes’s life. Instead of marriage she became a nun. She then built a hospital for the poor started a Poor Clare monastery.
She got permission from the church to found the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, and kept working to better the world through this organization. It was created to have Catholic women dedicate themselves and their lives to the less fortunate in the world, and work to make their lives better through their actions and hard work. Mother Teresa organized this whole group, which still works today with massive numbers behind it, so her impact on society is still not over; she is still touching peoples’ lives because of her love of God and her desire to make a difference in all the lives that she ever came in contact
Women could either join a convent of a beateria, a lay religious community (). There was also the expectation that married women would still be religious, but that was not meant to be their sole purpose in life (). Religiosity among women was usually expressed in a community. Religious orders, like the Poor Clares, Dominicans and Carmelites, were one option (). Family sometimes sent women to live in convents, making the woman the passive agent (). Women, however, did make the choice to live in a convent and become completely devoted to God. St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun and mystic from this time, is an example of this phenomenon (). St. Teresa’s religious experiences were not completely
Following the death of her mother, Saint Teresa began to deviate from the church. In her teenage years, her primary focuses were romance novels, boys, and rebellion. Because of this, her strict father sent her to live with the Augustinian nuns of her province at the age of sixteen where the Sisters helped her to return to her religious faith. In her window, Saint Teresa holds a book and a pen, symbolic of the reforms she made to the Carmelite order, as well as her great writings. In the predella, women are pictured entering Sharon, the home in England for Sisters of the Holy Child
This lead her to follow God’s will, and become a teacher at St Mary’s school, and later become the principle of this school. At the school Mother Teresa, taught history, english and a couple of other subjects to teach the children at the schools. She loved the kids as if they were her own, and equally. Mother Teresa’s second calling was the call to care for the people in the slums of Calcutta, but to do so she needed permission from her superiors, as at this stage Mother Teresa was the principle at St Mary’s. In the following year, Mother Teresa began her work which obeyed God’s call fro her to look after the poor, sick and dying in the streets. Through many difficulties, Mother Teresa obeyed and followed the work which God led her to do, her lives work, and influenced her into making these decisions. The vow of obedience, influence Mother Teresa greatly, in following orders from superiors, and God himself. As said by Mother Teresa, “…by faith, I am catholic. As to my calling, I belong to the world…”, her calling brought her closer to the world, and the calling itself influenced the work which Mother Teresa is known of doing.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta who lived from 1910 until 1997 received permission from the Pope to start her own religious community in order to work amongst the poorest of the poor. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, which is a Roman Catholic religious congregation. She taught Catholic Church doctrine on abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and social justice. She founded modest hospitals, clinics, schools, and centers to care for lepers in India and AIDS patients in the United States. Mother Teresa helped develop hospices and homes for people with tuberculosis. She started soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, counseling programs and orphanages for those with needs and no means to pay for these services. "She addressed the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, and the President of the United States, and boldly defended the life of the unborn and promoted adoption and Natural Family Planning as the only moral alternatives to abortion." (Trigilio and Brighenti 2003, 310) By 1996, Mother Teresa was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands serving the poor in 450 countries around the world. In 2012, the Missionaries of Charity had over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133
Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska was born Helena Kowalska on August 25, 1905 in Głogowiec, Poland. Helena’s family was very religious, so she and her nine siblings grew up with an understanding of the Catholic faith, despite their immense poverty. It was apparent that she was deeply interested in Catholicism from a very young age. She first attended Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at the impressionable age of seven. From there, her love of prayer and devotion to the Lord only increased. She celebrated her first Holy Communion at age nine. Helena only had a three-year education. Right when she got out of school, she wanted to enter a convent. However, her parents refused to give her permission. Once she became old enough, Helena got a job as a housekeeper to support herself and her family. She never could have expected the coming wonders the Lord had in store for her.
She began by starting an open-air school for the children of Calcutta. She did not have any funding for her school, but that did not stop Mother Teresa. After a couple years many people started volunteering and helped fund the school.