Mother Teresa Table Of Contents:

• Mother Teresa Biography


• Vintage Mother Teresa Photo


• Mother Teresa Prayer | Mother Teresa on Flickr


• Missionaries Of Charity


• Nobel Peace Prize & Mother Teresa


• Pope John Paul II & Mother Teresa's Beatification


• Roman Catholic Church


• Mother Teresa Videos


• Mother Teresa of Kolkata Best Selling Books


• Mother Teresa Letters | Saint Mother Teresa Quotes


• The Latest Mother Teresa of Calcutta News


• About Calcutta India | Kolkata India


• About The Republic of India


• Mother Teresa on Time Magazine


• Malcolm Muggeridge's Book


• Mother Teresa DVD and Music


• Guestbook | About SemperFidelis

Mother Teresa (born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) (August 26, 1910 - September 5, 1997), was a Roman Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work. For over forty years, she ministered to the needs of the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. As the Missionaries of Charity grew under Mother Teresa's leadership, they expanded their ministry to other countries. By the 1970s she had become internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book, Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge. Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and given the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on 26 August 1910, in Skopje, which today is capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The youngest of the children of an Albanian family, born to Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu. Nikola was involved in the politics of the day and devoted to the Albanian Cause. After a political meeting he felt ill and died shortly. It is thought that he had been poisoned. Agnes at the time was about eight years old. After her father's death she was raised as a Roman Catholic by her mother. According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, during her early years, Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service, and by the time she was twelve, she was convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life. Mother Teresa left her home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. Agnes would never again set eyes on her mother or sister. Agnes initially went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland in order to learn English, which was the language the Sisters of Loreto used when instructing school children in India. Arriving in India in 1929, she began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains. She took her first vows as a nun on 24 May 1931. At that time she chose the name Teresa after the patron saint of missionaries.

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The verses below reportedly were written on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta, and are widely attributed to her. Some sources say that the words below were written on the wall in Mother Teresa's own room.  In any case, their association with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity has made them popular worldwide, expressing as they do, the spirit in which they lived their lives. They seem to be based on a composition originally by Kent Keith, but much of the second half has been re-written in a more spiritual way.  Both versions are shown below.

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The version found written on the wall in Mother Teresa's home for children:

• People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.


• If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.


• If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.


• If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.


• What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.


• If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.


• The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.


• Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.


• In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

This version is credited to Mother Teresa. Source

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Missionaries of Charity is a Roman Catholic religious order established in 1950, which consists of over 4,500 nuns and is active in 133 countries. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "MC." Member nuns must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and the fourth vow, to give "Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest of the poor". The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. In 1984, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers was founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta with Fr. Joseph Langford, to combine the vocation of the Missionaries of Charity with the ministerial priesthood. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics constitute the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity.

Missionaries care for those who include refugees, ex-prostitutes, the mentally ill, sick children, abandoned children, lepers, AIDS victims, the aged, and convalescent. They have schools run by volunteers to educate street children, they run soup kitchens, as well as many other services as per the communities' needs. They have 19 homes in Kolkata alone which include homes for women, for orphaned children, and for the dying; an AIDS hospice, a school for street children, and a leper colony. These services are provided to people regardless of their religion. In 1990, Mother Teresa asked to resign as head of the Missionaries, but was soon voted back in as Superior General. On March 13, 1997, six months before Mother Teresa's death, Sister Mary Nirmala Joshi was selected the new Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity.

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The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is the name of one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Oslo, the capital of Norway. The actual prize always is presented on the 10th of December, the anniversary of the death of Nobel. The Norwegian king is in attendance. "In Oslo, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway. Under the eyes of a watching world, the Nobel Laureate receives three things: a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the prize amount." The Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony is held at the Oslo City Hall, followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which is broadcast to more than 450 million households in over 150 countries around the world. The concert has received worldwide fame and the participation of top celebrity hosts and performers. The selection of Nobel Peace Prize winners sometimes causes controversy, as the list of winners includes people who formerly used violent methods of problem-solving, but then later made exceptional concessions to non-violence in the attempt to achieve peace. Source | Image Source

1979 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate ~ Mother Teresa ~ Leader of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity ~ Excerpt from the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

"I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II) born Karol Józef Wojtyła; (18 May 1920 - 2 April 2005) reigned as the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City from 16 October 1978, until his death, almost 27 years later, making his the second-longest pontificate in modern times after Pius IX's 31-year reign. He is the only Polish pope, and was the first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Adrian VI in the 1520s. He is one of only four people to have been named to the Time 100 for both the 20th century and for a year in the 21st. Although not yet formally canonized, he was made the patron of World Youth Day for 2008 in Sydney, Australia. He started those days for youth in 1986.

His early reign was marked by his opposition to communism, and he is often credited as one of the forces which contributed to its collapse in Central and Eastern Europe. In the later part of his pontificate, he was notable for speaking against war, fascism, communism, dictatorship, materialism, abortion, contraception, relativism, unrestrained capitalism, and what he deemed the "culture of death".

John Paul II was Pope during a period in which the Catholic Church's influence declined in developed countries but expanded in the Third World. During his reign, the pope traveled extensively, visiting over 100 countries, more than any of his predecessors. He remains one of the most-traveled world leaders in history. He beatified Mother Teresa following her death. He was fluent in numerous languages: his native Polish and also Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Croatian, Portuguese, Russian and Latin. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he canonized a great number of people.

In 1992, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. On 2 April 2005 at 9:37 p.m. local time, Pope John Paul II died in the Papal Apartments while a vast crowd kept vigil in Saint Peter's Square below. Millions of people flocked to Rome to pay their respects to the body and for his funeral. The last years of his reign had been marked by his fight against the various diseases ailing him, provoking some concerns as to leadership should he become severely incapacitated/vegetative, and speculation as to whether he should abdicate. On 9 May 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II's successor, waived the five year waiting period for a cause for beatification to be opened.

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The Catholic Church or Roman Catholic Church is a Christian church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, currently Pope Benedict XVI. It traces its origins to the original Christian community founded by Jesus and spread by the Twelve Apostles, in particular Saint Peter. The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians, and is the largest organized body of any world religion. According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, the Catholic Church's worldwide recorded membership at the end of 2005 was 1,114,966,000, approximately one-sixth of the world's population.

The worldwide Catholic Church is made up of one Western or Latin and 22 Eastern Catholic autonomous particular churches, all of which look to the Pope, alone or along with the College of Bishops, as their highest authority on earth for matters of faith, morals and church governance. It is divided into jurisdictional areas, usually on a territorial basis. The standard territorial unit is called a diocese in the Latin church and an eparchy in the Eastern churches. Each diocese or eparchy is headed by a bishop, patriarch or eparch. At the end of 2006, the total number of all these jurisdictional areas (or "Sees") was 2,782.

The Church traces its history to Jesus and the Twelve Apostles, and sees the bishops of the Church as the successors of the Apostles in general, and the Pope as the successor of Saint Peter, leader of the Apostles, in particular. The first known use of the term "Catholic Church" was in a letter by Ignatius of Antioch in 107, who wrote: "Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

Catholicism is monotheistic: it believes that God is one, eternal, all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), and omnipresent. God exists as distinct from and prior to his creation (that is, everything which is not God, and which depends directly on him for existence) and yet is still present intimately in his creation. In the First Vatican Council the Church taught that, while by the natural light of human reason God can be known in his works as origin and end of all created things, God has also chosen to reveal himself and his will supernaturally in the ways indicated in the Letter to the Hebrews 1:1-2.

Human beings, in Catholic belief, were originally created to live in union with God. Through the disobedience of the first humans (Adam and Eve), that relationship was broken and sin and death came into the world. The Fall of Man left humans in a state called original sin, that is, separated from their original state of intimacy with God which carried into death through the idea of the individual human soul being immortal. But when Jesus came into the world, being both God and man, he was able through his sacrifice to reconcile humanity with God. By becoming one in Christ, through the church, humanity was once again capable of intimacy with God and also offered participation in the divine life on Earth, which will reach its fullness in heaven in the beatific vision. The sacrament of baptism is the ordinary means for the remission of original sin.

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In dozens of letters spanning 66 years, Mother Teresa described the "emptiness" she felt and confessed her struggles with faith and the existence of heaven in pages she had planned to have destroyed. A decade after her death, they have been published in the book "Come By My Light" as part of the petition for her sainthood.

"The lives of the saints are personal, but they are not private," said The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, who is publishing the letters. "The documents are really are quite valuable in that they speak of her own holiness and the value … to people who can relate to what she was going through."[read the ABC News article]

So Mother Teresa isn't perfect. She has, as Murray Kempton noted in his review of Christopher Hitchens's book ["The Shadow Saint," NYR, July 11], accepted donations from dictators and other unsavory characters. Mother also tolerates substandard medical conditions in her hospices. Still, Mr. Kempton's hysterical attack on her is unwarranted and not a little unfair.

He protests that Mother Teresa books herself into chic hospitals when falling ill, while her own hospices treat clients with only minimal health care. But anyone familiar with religious orders will be aware that a sick superior is, more often than not, urged by the members of her community to treat herself better than she would if left on her own. Conversely, when poverty-minded superiors are allowed to let their own medical problems go untreated, people profess horror. Such was the case with John Paul I, who died in 1978. As John Cornwell pointed out in his book A Thief in the Night, the papal household were far too deferential to the Pope's instructions not to call for quality medical care even when he was obviously ill. In this case, though, Mother Teresa's subordinates force her to take better care of herself, perhaps against her wishes. Is this a sin against poverty, a hypocrisy, or, more likely, a demonstration of the deep affection of the Missionaries of Charity for their founder?...[read the NYReview article]

• Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.


• Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.


• Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.


• Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.


• Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.


• Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.


• Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.


• Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.


• God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.


• Good works are links that form a chain of love.


• I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.


• I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

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ROME, - On January 4 Pope Benedict XVI visited a homeless shelter in Rome founded "20 years ago by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and currently operated by the congregation she founded, the Missionaries of Charity." The superior of the Dono di Maria shelter, Sister Mark Poustani, told Vatican Radio that the sisters were awaiting the Pope's visit "with joy and gratitude". "We are a community of sisters and our first task is prayer," Sister Poustani said. "At this time there are eight of us. We begin with prayer and at 8am we collect the fruit of that prayer, that is, the work with the poor." "We seek not only to give food but also the Word to our guests, sharing it with them every day," she added...[read the Catholic News Agency article]

LONDON: Mother Teresa, not Princess Diana, was the first saint of the celebrity age, according to a new book on the diminutive nun. In an attempt to re-define the world's idea of the 20th-century icon, 'Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?', sociologist Dr Gezim Alpion says Mother Teresa's image was a creature she allowed to come to being by using media attention to further her cause...[read the Times of India article]

The tens of thousands of homeless in Baghdad find shelter wherever they can in the most dangerous city in the world. Just outside the Karada district, there is an abandoned Iraqi military base from the Saddam Hussein era that looters had reduced to little more than piles of rubble strewn around the cement slabs in the ground. Displaced from other parts of Iraq, these people have taken up shelter in makeshift houses on the otherwise deserted grounds. Among them is Hadi Shaker Hamadi and his clan, cobbling together a shelter of cinderblocks, scrap wood and cardboard. They and the 70 or so other families here take charity whenever it comes. And only one person seems to deliver it regularly. Says Hamadi, "It's just Madeeha who comes and visits us." [read the Time article]

For further information, read Time's Most Influential People of 2008, Madeeha Hasan Odhaib By Queen Rania. Alternatively, consider watching MSNBC's Tending To The Bereft In Iraq.

Finding beauty in urban (and rural) life. As a child growing up (in Spanish Harlem) you learn to see moments of beauty where they exist and feel grateful for them. Even if I weren't a writer, I would still notice those things. I think everybody needs some kind of beauty in their life no matter how hard their life is or how difficult. There's plenty of poverty and bad things that happen in rural places too. Those hardships don't only exist in the city, they exist pretty much everywhere. So I think if you're in one of those situations where you're struggling really hard, you need those moments of beauty to keep you going and so you kind of train your eye to look out for them and to notice them and to be grateful for them...[read the Singapore Catholic News article]

New Delhi (AsiaNews) - Anti-Christian violence in Orissa continues. A house belonging to the Missionaries of Charity, the male branch of Mother Teresa's order, was attacked by Hindu fundamentalists in Kandhamal. Violence was visited upon Brother Sadasananda and a local Mother Teresa Shanti Niwas (peaceful abode). The same happened to the Saint Joseph of Annecy convent of Sisters. Despite a curfew the attack took place in the middle of the night. The sisters and the priest living at the mission fled and are hiding in the forest that surrounds the area. In India's capital Christians of every denomination have organised a big protest march against the violence in Orissa...[read the AsiaNews.it article]

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass on Sunday in the Sistine Chapel, using the church's original altar beneath Michelangelo's depiction of the Last Judgment instead of the removable altar used by Pope John Paul II. The Vatican's office for liturgical celebrations issued a statement saying the decision to use the old altar was used to respect "the beauty and the harmony of this architectural jewel."...[read the EWTN News article]

Mother Teresa, the charismatic nun who died September 5 at the age of 87, was hardly a political figure in the conventional sense. But she had a politician's sense of issues and timing: she knew that in modern-day India, a nation of nearly a billion overwhelmingly poor people, the biggest issue of all was poverty. She drew larger crowds and invited greater affection than any politician -- testimony to her integrity and her humility, qualities conspicuous by their absence in the men and women who govern the world's largest democracy today...[read the CNN News article]

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Kolkata, formerly Calcutta (help·info), is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located in eastern India on the east bank of the River Hooghly. The city has a population of almost 4.5 million, with an extended metropolitan population of over 14 million, making it the third-largest urban agglomeration and the fourth-largest city in India. Kolkata served as the capital of India during the British Raj until 1911. Once the centre of modern education, science, culture and politics in India, Kolkata witnessed economic stagnation in the years following India's independence in 1947. However, since the year 2000, an economic rejuvenation has led to a spurt in the city's growth. Like other metropolitan cities of India, Kolkata continues to struggle with urbanisation problems like poverty, pollution and traffic congestion. Kolkata is noted for its revolutionary history, ranging from the Indian struggle for independence to the leftist and trade union movements.

The names Kolkata and Calcutta were probably based on Kalikata, the name of one of the three villages (Kalikata, Sutanuti, Gobindapur) in the area before the arrival of the British. "Kalikata", in turn, is believed to be an anglicised version of Kalikshetra, "Land of [the goddess] Kālī"). Alternatively, the name may have been derived from the Bengali term kilkila ("flat area"). Again, the name may have its origin in the indigenous term for a natural canal, Khal, followed by Katta (which may mean dug). While the city's name was always pronounced either "Kolkata" or "Kolikata" in the local Bengali language, its official English name was only changed from "Calcutta" to "Kolkata" in 2001, reflecting the Bengali pronunciation. Some view this as a move to erase the legacy of British rule.

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