On being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she said:
“I am grateful, and I’m very happy to receive it, in the name of the hungry, of the naked, of the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved … people who have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everybody – in their name.”
Mother Teresa died on this day in 1997. Born as Agnes Bojaxhiu in 1910, of Albanian parents, she spent her childhood in Skopje and decided at any early age to dedicate her life to Christ. In 1928, she went to India and joined an Irish order of nuns, teaching in a convent school and taking her final vows in 1937. She left her post as principal of the school in 1948 to work with the poor and sick in the Calcutta slums. Two years later, she opened her own religious order and in 1952, opened a House for the Dying after finding a woman close to death who had literally been discarded by her family in a dustbin.
An amazing woman.
