Mother Teresa:

Caring for the world’s poor.

By team TWIN:

JYOTSNA SINGH

ABHISHEK DEVGAN

SHIKHA SINGH

MEENU SINGH

ARPITA PALIT

SMRIDDHI

NAMITA R.

THE MESIAH

• A true patron of love, and brotherhood.

• Lived a life for changing lives of million others.

• Listened to God’s Commands to help destitutes.

Early life of saint of gutters• Born in Eastern Europe to Albanian

parents.

• Had a tragic childhood, as she lost her father at a very young age.

• Named as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu by her parents.

• Left home at young age of 18 in 1928 to give her life for the service of Jesus.

• Never again saw her mother and older sister Age.

Beginning of a new Life

• Joined the religious order of the Sister of Loreto.

• Selected as one of the postulates to be trained and sent to India.

• Spent two months in Ireland studying English, performing some kind of manual labor around the convent or taking part in the Divine Offices.

• Keen to serve as a young postulate and teach girls at India.

First impressions of India• Left Ireland on 1st December 1928, to reach

India.• Spent 1 months of tiresome journey on ship and

reached Madras in January 1929.• Shocked to the depths of her being by the

indescribable poverty.• Following a brief stopover in Calcutta set off up

the Ganges River to Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas,where the Loreto Sisters maintained a convent and school.

Novice: Agnes to Teresa

• On May 23, 1929, Agnes officially became novice, the next stage after postulant in the process of becoming a nun.

• To mark this important occasion Agnes took the name of Teresa, after St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a French nun from the Carmelite order.

• In May 1931, Teresa graduated from her novitiate and took her first vows as a Sister of Loreto.

Contd…

• Took vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty.

• After taking her vows, Sister Teresa was assigned to teach in the Loreto convent school at Darjeeling.

• Taught various subjects to upper middle class Indian and British girls at Loreto Convent school in Calcutta & Darjeeling.

• Promoted as Principal of Loreto Convent calcutta.

Calcutta, War & Sister Teresa• World War II shows its devastating signs

in Calcutta.

• Burma is taken over by Japanese troops as a result thousands of people take refugee in Calcutta.

• The normal life at city is broken due to military control by Britishers.

• The freedom struggle also became intense.

Contd..• In the meantime city witness religious riots

between Hindus and Muslims over the creation of East Pakistan.

• The entire city faces big famine and the prices of food skyrocketed.

• As a result thousands of people died on streets due to hunger, poverty and war.

• These deaths create a huge impact over the tender mind of Sister Teresa.

A call within a call• “On September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa was on

the night train from Calcutta to the Loreto Sisters’ Himalayan retreat atDarjeeling, when she suddenly heard a voice “speaking in her heart.”24 It was a heavenly summons, she believed: God was calling her to give up the comfortable world of the Loreto convent to live and labor in the slums of Calcutta At first, Teresa had mixed feelings about what she would later describe as her “call within a call ”*

• *According to Biographer Anne Sebba

Incubation of Missionary of Charity

• Convinced by her call to serve the poorest of poor Mother Teresa outlined her plan to the Archbishop of Calcutta.

• Plan was to resign from the Sisters of Loreto order and establish a new missionary order dedicated to serving “the poorest of the poor.”

• At the end of 1947, Archbishop Perier allowed her to write to the head of the Loreto Sisters in Ireland to request her release from the order.

Contd..

• Relived from the sisters of loreto order in 1948 and was permitted to labor and live in Calcutta’s slums as a vowed nun for a probationary period of one year.

Getting Started

• On August 17, 1948, Mother Teresa exchanged the heavy black habit of the Sisters of Loreto for a simple white sari with blue trim.

• Before beginning her mission to the “poorest of the poor,” she obtained some basic medical training from Patna.

• Mother Teresa started her new enterprise in Moti Jheel just as India was launching its new life as an independent country.

Contd…

• By the end of 1948, when Teresa embarked on her mission of mercy, “Calcutta had the lowest life expectancy rate in the world.

• She took courage from following verses of Bible “In Him who is the source of my strength I have strength for everything.”

• Saw the need of School in the slums of Moti Jheel

• Had neither a building nor supplies, taught her young pupils in a small open area among the rows of hovels, using a stick to trace the Bengali alphabet on the ground.

Contd…

• Each day, her makeshift school attracted a few more students.

• Encouraged Teresa started visiting Catholic churches and charitable societies to solicit donations for her undertaking.

• In some time Mother Teresa had collected enough money to rent space in a local building and purchase desks, blackboards, and books.

• Just a few weeks after she first walked into Moti Jheel, she had more than 50 pupils and several volunteer teachers to assist her in instructing them.

Contd…

• Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta’s slums was off to an impressive start, but she was not satisfied.

• With the Moti Jheel school up and running, she opened a second free school in the even more notorious slum of Tiljala.

• Opened a medical dispensary in a room provided to her by St. Teresa’s Church, near Moti Jheel.

• To keep her dispensary well stocked with medicine, she relied on donations from nearby pharmacies.

The Missionaries of Charity

• By late 1949, Mother Teresa’s year of probation had come to an end. Nearly a dozen followers now lived with her & assisted her work with Calcutta’s poorest citizens.

• On October 7, 1950, she received papal approval as a new congregation called “Missionaries of Charity”.

• Each member of this order including Mother Teresa kept her worldly belongings to a bare minimum: 3 cotton saris,1 of sandals, a crucifix and rosary, an umbrella for the monsoon season, 1 bucket for washing, and a thin straw-filled pad to sleep on.

Nirmal Hirday• Moved by the sight of an old leprosy

patient lying on the streets her foot eaten by rats she opened nirmal hirday.

• A house for sick and ailing leprosy patients and destitutes.

• Formed mobile clinics to dispense drugs to other leprosy patients in various slums of calcutta.

• Opened dedicated homes for aliling old patients so that they can die peacefully.

Ministering to calcutta’s abandoned

• Within a year of opening Nirmal Hriday, she embarked on another charitable project in Calcutta, the Shishu Bhavan home for abandoned and orphaned children.

• By 1958 Shishu Bhavan was home to nearly 100 boys and girls.

• Taught the residents of shishu bhavan various subjects and other vocational skills like weaving.

Moving Beyond Calcutta

• In 1960, the Missionaries of Charity,which now included more than 100 members opened branch in slum ridden city of Ranchi.

• She quickly opened houses in a host of other Indian locations, including Jhansi, Ambala, Patna, and Bombay.

• In Delhi, India’s capital, she founded a home for abandoned and orphaned children modeled after Shishu Bhawan.

Becoming an international figure

• In February 1965, after four years of determined campaigning by Mother Teresa the order came in direct control of Vatican City.

• Within six months of coming under Vatican jurisdiction, the Missionaries of Charity established their first house outside of India in the Venezuelan diocese of Barquisimeto.

• It was soon followed by invitations to found missions in a number of locations around the globe, from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), African nation of Tanzania, Jordan,& Australia.

Contd…

• In these far-flung places, the Missionaries of Charities tirelessly devoted themselves to aiding the destitute, the diseased, the abandoned, and the dying.

• Opened centers of recruitment in London, Rome and Europe.

• Opened another branch of the order in Baltic.

Missionaries Brothers of Charity• Formed a male branch of her religious

order in 1963,known as Missionary Brothers of Charity.

• Following in Mother Teresa’s footsteps, by the early 1970s,the Brothers of Charity had taken their mission to the poor beyond India’s borders.

• Their first foreign venture was in the war-ravaged country of Vietnam, where they established a house in Saigon in early 1973 to feed and shelter the city’s destitute.

Mother’s growing Fame

• In 1971,Pope Paul VI presented her with the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize.

• Three other major awards followed that same year:

• The Good Samaritan Award of the National Catholic Development Conference.

• The John F. Kennedy International Award

• An honorary degree from the Catholic University of America.

Contd…

• In 1972, the Indian government honored her with the Nehru Award for International Understanding.

• In 1973 Prince Philip of England awarded her the Templeton Award for Progress in Religion.

• Nominated for Nobel Prize for peace in 1972, 194, 1975, 1978 & 1979.

And the Nobel

• Mother Teresa was awarded the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, which she accepted “in the name of the poor, the hungry, the sick and the lonely.

• Mother Teresa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize and the $190,000 check.

• An additional $6,000 was also donated to the poor of Calcutta by the Nobel Committee.

Jewel of India

• Three months after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa was awarded India’s ultimate civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna,or “Jewel of India

• Truly she was the jewel of India as she gave so much to true India: the sick, poor, ailing and destitutes.

And Finally the spark ends…

• After two months on bed the bright spark finally faded away on 5th September 1997.

• Her funeral witnessed various national and international leaders besides religious clerics.

• Mother Teresa was honored with an Indian state funeral.

Our learnings

• Self awareness and the awareness of our inner aspirations are the first step to achieve our inner goal.

• Self reliance and empathy are great tools for success .

• Once we are clear and determined to achieve what we want we can definitely achieve it.

Contd…

• Without self belief we can not persuade others to collaborate with us to achieve our dreams.

• We should recognise our call within calls, i.e. our core competency arear where no one can beat us and do it, at every cost as we are bound to succeed.

• We should derive strength in initial tough phases by self confidence, faith on God and self belief.

Contd…

• Nothing is unreachable and no goal is unbeatable if we utilise our true potential.

• Nurturing our dreams and working towards their fulfillment gives us true happiness.

• Self development is prerequisite to become successful.

• Good Interpersonal skills help us to achieve goals easily.

Refrences

• Louise Chipley Salavicek-Caring for the world’s poor.Chelesa House Pub.1995

• Anne Sebba- MotherTeresa: Beyond the Image. NewYork: Doubleday, 1997.

• Eileen Egan- Such a Vision of the Street: MotherTeresa—The Spirit and the Work. Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday, 1985.

• Scott- A Revolution of Love