Mother Teresa won a Nobel—and fierce fights over her wards
Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (1910–1997), an Albanian-Indian nun better known as Mother Teresa, founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950. The order reached more than 133 countries by 2012. Admirers cited her Nobel Peace Prize; critics cited bleak dying rooms without adequate pain care.
Her given name Anjezë is a form of Agnes, and Gonxhe means flower bud in Albanian. Born in Skopje on 26 August 1910, she was baptised the next day and later treated that baptism date as her true birthday. Her father Nikollë, active in Albanian community politics, died in 1919 after a trip to Belgrade, probably poisoned, when she was eight. By twelve she had set her heart on religious life, inspired by tales of missionaries in Bengal.
In 1928, at eighteen, she joined the Sisters of Loreto at Rathfarnham in Ireland to learn English, the language of the order's work in India. She never saw her mother or sister again: the family moved to Tirana in 1934, and under Enver Hoxha's communist rule she was branded a Vatican agent and denied visits even when other countries interceded. She reached India in 1929, trained in Darjeeling, learned Bengali, and took first vows in 1931, choosing the Spanish spelling Teresa because another nun already had Thérèse.
Her congregation, founded in 1950, runs homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, plus soup kitchens, clinics, orphanages and schools, with more than 4,500 sisters by 2012. Members add a fourth vow to chastity, poverty and obedience: free, wholehearted service to the poorest.
Critics faulted those homes for the dying for grim conditions and scant medicine or pain relief, even as books and films celebrated her. Navin Chawla's authorised biography appeared in 1992. The Catholic Church canonised her on 4 September 2016, keeps her feast on 5 September, the day she died, and in 2017 made her co-patron of the Calcutta archdiocese beside Francis Xavier.
Source: Mother Teresa
