August 27, 1910 - Mother Teresa Born

Mother Teresa, photograph by Evert Odekerken, India, 1988. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY 2.5.

Few modern Christians have become as widely recognized for serving the poor as Mother Teresa. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 27, 1910, in Skopje (then part of the Ottoman Empire; later within Yugoslavia and today the capital of North Macedonia), she felt called to religious life as a teenager. At age 18, she joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland, took the name Teresa, and soon departed for India, where she would spend nearly the rest of her life.

While teaching in Calcutta, Teresa concluded that she was called to work directly among the city's poorest residents. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation dedicated to caring for those who were sick, dying, abandoned, and destitute. Over the following decades, the order established homes for orphans, hospices for the terminally ill, leprosy centers, and charitable ministries that expanded to countries around the world.

Why It Matters

Mother Teresa became one of the most recognizable Christian figures of the twentieth century. Admirers praised her lifelong commitment to serving people whom society often overlooked, while critics questioned some aspects of her methods and the quality of care provided in her institutions. Her life continues to generate discussion about Christian charity, compassion, poverty, and the practical challenges of humanitarian work. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by the Roman Catholic Church in 2016.