Mother Teresa Biography, unknown facts

Mother Teresa Biography, unknown facts 

Real Name- Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu

Social Worker

Family Background

Mother Teresa is the founder of the missionaries of charity. Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Scotch the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia. Her father's name was Nikollr Bojaxhiu and mother's name was Dranafile Bojaxhiu. 

Her father was an Albanian businessman, benefactor and politician and mother was a grocer. Her parents named her Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. When she was 8 years old, her father died. She studied in a convent run primary school. Then she joined a state-run secondary school for further studies .She sang in the local Sacred Heart choir in her childhood. 

Life before starting working as social worker

In 1928 an 18 years old Anjeze decided to become a nun and set off her Ireland to join the sisters of Loreto in Dublin. There she has the name of "sister Mary Theresa".

Sister Mary Theresa came to India in 1929. She learned Bengali and started teaching in Darjeeling West Bengal at st. Teresa's school. In May 1931, her first religious vows were taken. On May 24th, 1937 she took her final profession of vows and would that acquire the name which the world recognizes her with today "Mother Teresa" .

The next 20 years of her life mother Teresa dedicated to serving as a teacher at the st. Mary's School graduating to the post of the principal in 1944. 

Started working for Humanity

The day of September 10th 1946 transformed her life completely she decided to help the poor by living among them. So as to pursue the new calling, she began missionary work with the poor on August 17th 1948 replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari with a blue border. Her first outing was on December 21st 1948 to help the people in the slums.

Some famous works done by Mother Teresa

• Mother Teresa finally received permission by the Vatican to start a congregation that known as missionaries of charity in October 7th 1950. 
• The congregation started off with 13 members in 1952 she inaugurated the first home for the dying then she initiating a home for those suffering from Hansen's disease commonly known as "leprosy". The home was called "Shanty Nagar". 
• In 1955 mother Teresa opened a home for the orphans and homeless youths named as "Nirmala sheshu Bhavan" or the children's home of the Immaculate Heart.
• By 1960 missionaries of charity had opened several hospices, orphanages and leper houses all over India.
• In 1963 missionaries of charity brothers was founded. In 1976 a contemplative branch of the sisters was opened. In 1981 she began the Corpus Christi movement for priests and in 1984 the missionaries of charity father's was initiated. Then she formed the co-workers of mother Teresa the sick and suffering co-workers and the lay missionaries of charity.
• The congregation opened its first house outside India in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Then in Rome, Tanzania and Austria. By 1970s the order had reached several countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and United States. Almost 37 children were rescued by her in 1982. These children were trapped in a frontline hospital in Beirut. The first missionaries of charity home was made in the United States in 1984. 
• In 1991 Mother Teresa went to her homeland for the first time after 1937. She opened Missionaries of Charity brothers home in Tirana, Albania. By 1997 missionaries of charity had almost 4,000 sisters working in 610 foundations in 450 centers in 123 countries across the 6 continents.

Number of Awards she got

Honoured with Bharat Ratna, Padma shri and many other awards. The Government of India honoured her with "Padma Shri" award for international understanding and "Bharat Ratna" (India's highest civilian award) on January 25, 1980. In 1962 she was also honoured with "Ramon Magsaysay Award". In 1979, she was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Last years of her life

She suffered a heart attack while visiting Pope John Paul the second in Rome in 1983. She died on September 5th, 1997 at the age of 87 at Calcutta, West Bengal, India.

In 2003 mother Teresa was beautified by Pope John Paul II at st. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Since then she has been known as "Blessed Mother Teresa". She was canonized by Pope Francis on 4 September 2016 and is now known as st. Teresa of Calcutta.

Here we are presenting you some Unknown Facts about Mother Teresa

• At the age of 12 she decided that she would commit herself to religious life and so she did six years later.

• She never saw her family again after joining the religious congregation leaving home in 1928, aged 18, she went to Ireland to join the sisters of Loreto at Loreto. However Theresa took care of her family's graves and even visited them in her declining years.

• She kept a Pope waiting in the 1960s. Her work had already gained the attention of church leaders who started calling on her willing to support her projects. However Mother Teresa stick to her vows and put her mission work above everything else. There was this one time in 1965 when Pope Paul the sixth came to India to visit her but she informed him that she was too busy doing her charity work and that she couldn't meet him. Instead of offending the Pope this only made him admire her more for her dedication. He decided to support her cause by offering her the "Lincoln" he'd been driving around and for his trip which mother Teresa accepted and then auctioned it off to raise funds for her projects.

• Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize (the most famous honor) . Hearing that she had been selected by the Nobel Committee she said that she was unworthy. The US President Carter who is one of the nominees himself sent mother Teresa a message congratulating her for the award. Mother Teresa did not forget her life purpose even while standing in the Hall of Fame. She reminded the audience that what she was most aware of was the condition of the poor and she refused the traditional Nobel banquet that has hosted for most recipients as a celebration she insisted that the equivalent of $190,000 be used to help the poor.

• In spite of being so liberal and involved with Social Work Mother Teresa had a strong pro-life position. She believed that unborn babies were the weakest of the weak and insisted on how important it was for expecting mothers to be helped and cared for furthermore. In 1994, at the National Prayer Breakfast she even stood in front of US President Bill Clinton saying that she felt that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion because it's a war on the child. A direct killing of an innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

• Mother teresa's Kalighat home for the dying raised controversy. Established by Mother Teresa in 1952 in the building of an abandoned Hindu temple, it was a free hospice for the poor people who were brought to the home, received medical attention from the missionaries of charity and the idea was for them to be given the opportunity to die with dignity. However in 1991, after visiting the home Robin Fox (editor of the british medical journal) wrote that the medical care patients were given was haphazard. He explained the personnel had little to no medical knowledge and that serious medical errors related to decision-making, pain management or even diagnose incurable and incurable diseases were systematically made. These aspects were confirmed by other reports as well documenting the situation.

• Baptism of the dying was another controversial aspect of Mother Teresa's work. The ultimate supposed Emma D the dying were to receive in the hospices run by mother Teresa and the missionaries of charity was the baptism. The members of her order were encouraged to baptize dying patients without regard to the individuals religion. As mother Teresa considered it to be beautiful for no one to die without receiving it. This was happening in a country where the large majority of the population was Hindu. So strong criticism was brought to this practice.

• Mother Teresa received a state funeral. Mother Teresa passed away in 1997 at the age of 87 and the Indian government decided to give her a state funeral in order to honor her lifetime work with the sick, the needy and the poor. What is interesting is that in India state funerals are normally reserved for the president and the ministers. The criteria is based on their service to the country and the entire country is asked to mourn. However Mother Teresa was once again the exception to the rule as she received a state funeral as an expression of gratitude to the Indian people. She was buried in Calcutta after a six-hour ceremony.

• She also got involved in international charities. Mother Teresa made several trips outside of India for humanitarian reasons for example in 1982 she rescued 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital at the height. This was made possible with the help of the Red Cross, whose workers accompanied her through the war zone to the hospital so that she could evacuate the children. She also tried to expand her work to communist countries which unfortunately rejected the missionaries of charity. Furthermore she visited Armenia in 1988 after the 6.8 magnitude earthquake so as to help the hungry in Ethiopia as well as the radiation victims of Chernobyl.  In total she operated 507 missions in over 100 countries.

• As her health started to decline, it was thought she was under attack by the devil. Mother Teresa's health started to decline in 1983 when she had a heart attack in Rome while visiting Pope John Paul II subsequently when she was hospitalized in Calcutta. Henry Sebastian D'Souza ordered a priest to perform an exorcism with her permission because he feared her problems were due to spiritual matters. Mother Teresa had a second heart attack in 1989 after which she received an artificial pacemaker due to all these problems, she offered to resign as the head of the missionaries of charity but the sisters of the congregation voted for her to stay and she obeyed their will.

• She received worldwide recognition through hundreds of honors what is truly fascinating is how much recognition one can get when they're not chasing it. Mother Teresa received a total of 124 awards and honors including the "Nobel Peace Prize", "the Padma Shri" award from the President of India in August 1962.

• She is Saint mother Teresa today after her death. The Holy See began the process of beautification and canonization for which a total of 35,000 pages were used as documentation what was also needed is the documentation of a miracle resulting from the intercession of the prospective Saint and so in 2002 the Vatican recognized the occurrence of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture healing the tumor of an Indian woman as a miracle thus Mother Teresa was canonized on September 4th 2016 by Pope Francis in Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City. Thousands of people witnessed the ceremony.

• There are very suspicions regarding the way Mother Teresa managed donations. Being accused to have built an empire of charity Mother Teresa suspicious fund management was criticized on several occasions. In 2013, a research group from the University of Montreal brought to light several controversial aspects regarding her questionable political contacts as well as her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money, she received. In 2017 an investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published accounting documents from the Institute of the works on religion which is the Vatican Bank revealing figures of the funds held by Mother Teresa on behalf of her charities and how she was the bank's biggest client amounting to billions.

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