How long was mother teresa in calcutta

She quickly attracted both financial support and volunteers, and in her group, now called the Missionaries of Charity, received official status as a religious community within the Archdiocese of Calcutta. Members took the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but they added a fourth vow—to give free service to the most abjectly poor.

In Mother Teresa's own view, the work of her group was very different from that of secular welfare agencies. She saw her nuns ministering to Jesus, whom they encounter as suffering in the poor, especially those who are dying alone or who are abandoned children. The Missionaries of Charity began their distinctive work of ministering to the dying in , when they took over a temple in Calcutta that previously had been dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali.

The sisters working there had, as their main goal, filling with dignity and love the last days of poor people who were dying. The physical conditions of this shelter were not imposing, although they were completely clean; but the emotional atmosphere of love and concern struck most visitors as truly saintly. When the sisters were criticized or disparaged because of the small scale of their work in the context of India's tens of millions of desperately poor and suffering people , Mother Teresa tended to respond very simply.

She considered any governmental help a benefit, but she was content to have her sisters do what they could for specific suffering people, since she regarded each individual as infinitely precious in God's sight. The Missionaries of Charity received considerable publicity, and Mother Teresa used it rather adroitly to benefit her work.

In they began to work with lepers and slowly expanded their educational work, at one point running nine elementary schools in Calcutta. They also opened a home for orphans and abandoned children.

In they began to expand outside of Calcutta, starting works in other Indian cities. As in Calcutta, their focus was the poorest of the poor: orphans, the dying, and those ostracized by diseases such as leprosy. Before long they had a presence in more than 22 Indian cities, and Mother Teresa had visited such other countries as Ceylon now Sri Lanka , Australia, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Italy to begin foundations. Although in most of these countries the problems of the poor seemed compounded by uncontrolled population growth, the Sisters held strongly negative views on both abortion and contraception.

Their overriding conviction was that all lives are precious, and sometimes they seemed to imply that the more human beings there were, the better God's plan was flourishing. This was a sort of "third order, " as Catholics sometimes call basically lay groups that affiliate with religious orders both to help the orders in their work and to participate in their idealistic spirituality.

These Co-Workers were drawn to Mother Teresa's work with the very poor, and their constitution specified that they wanted to help serve the poorest of the poor, without regard to caste or creed, in a spirit of prayer and sacrifice. Benefactors regularly would arrive to support works in progress or to stimulate the Sisters to open new ventures. Mother Teresa received increasing attention in the media, especially through a British Broadcasting Corporation special interview that Malcolm Muggeridge conducted with her in London in In , on the occasion of visiting some of her sisters in London, she went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to pray with the Irish women for peace and to meet with lan Paisley, a militant Protestant leader.

In the same year she opened a home in Bangladesh for women raped by Pakistani soldiers in the conflicts of that time. By her groups had more than different operations in over 25 countries around the world, with dozens more ventures on the horizon. In she persuaded President Fidel Castro to allow a mission in Cuba. The hallmark of all of Mother Teresa's works—from shelters for the dying to orphanages and homes for the mentally ill—continued to be service to the very poor. In she returned home to Albania and opened a home in Tirana, the capital.

At this time, there were homes operating in India. The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29, By the s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. She also received the Balzan Prize and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. It even appeared in the Indian Loreto Entrance Book as her date of birth.

In fact, as she confided to her friend, co-worker and American author, Eileen Egan, that was the date on which she was christened Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. The date which marked the beginning of her Christian life was undoubtedly the more important to Mother Teresa, but she was none the less actually born in Skopje, Serbia, on the previous day.

Mother Teresa died on September 5, Her lifelong dedication to serving God in his people was, so far as she was concerned, only an apprenticeship for her real work after she died. Subscribe to Franciscan Spirit blog! Franciscan Spirit Blog. Kerry Walters. When those who so love the Divine, become that divinity Christ felt alone on the cross, fulfilling his destiny; dear Teresa felt alone for so many years, fulfilling hers.

This piece has opened my eyes to my mission here on earth. If we could all look beyond the surface of each other and see that each of us has a Mission from God here on earth. Let us all take a moment to peel back the layers and see the light within each individual.

Therese Fairbanks. This well written account of st. Thank you. I feel a lot better after reading this well written article about the Saint of our time Mother Theresa. I relate so much with what she went through. Khelly Jones. Ephesians We are saved by grace through faith, not of works. Anything you do is not counted to get to heaven my friend. Only the work of Jesus Christ on the cross by shedding his blood.

That's how you receive forgiveness of your sin. You have to trust what he did alone to save you, not anything you do. God bless you.