Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a Roman Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. She has been revered throughout the years as a true Saint. Her humanitarian work won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Mother Teresa began her beatification toward sainthood in 2003, six years after she died.

A bit of Mother Teresa biography - she was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 27, 1910. Her parents were Albanian and resided in Skopje which was under the Ottoman Empire rule at the time. She decided to become a nun at the very early age of 12. When she turned 18, she joined the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland and trained in Dublin for several months before moving on to Darjiling in India. In 1931, when she was only 21 years old, she took her first religious vows. The name that Mother Teresa chose for herself was from Saint Theresa of Lisieux, who was the patron saint of foreign missionaries.

During the course of her life she taught school at Saint Mary’s High School which is located in Calcutta. She was very heartsick at the sight of the sick and dying in Calcutta’s streets and one of the most famous of Mother Teresa quotes is that she felt led “to leave the convent and help the poor, while living among them.” Mother Teresa was, in fact, given permission to leave the convent in 1948 and began her work as an independent nun. 1948 was also the year in which she founded the Missionaries of Charity, which was, and is today, focused on providing help to the sick and destitute.

Over the next few years of her life, Mother Teresa of Calcutta opened the Pure Heart Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta. She opened several orphanages, among other homes for the sick and destitute, such as a hospital for lepers. The Nobel Prize committee awarded her the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize due to her work in “bringing help to suffering humanity.” In 1996 a book was published that outlines a collection of Mother Teresa quotes and anecdotes. On September 5, 1997, the world lost Mother Teresa, and with it one of very few saints on earth.