Mother Teresa

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]

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.

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.

1. ↑ PBS Online Newshour (September 5, 1997).Mother Teresa Dies Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, www.pbs.org. Retrieved August, 2007
2. ↑ "Mother Teresa - The Nobel Peace Prize 1979". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2009-09-03.
3. ↑ "The greatest destroyer of peace..." BrainyQuote. Retrieved 2 June 2012.
4. ↑ Associate Press, "Full house for Mother Teresa ceremony" Archived 2004-03-05 at the Wayback Machine October 14, (2003; retrieved from CNN Archived 2013-07-30 at the Wayback Machine on May 30, 2007.
5. ↑ "Blessed Mother Teresa," in Encyclopædia Britannica (2007). Retrieved May 30, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online