Zafar Shayan
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
– Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa is the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, and she considered as one of the 20th century’s greatest humanitarians. She was born in an Albanian family in 1910 in Skopje, which is currently the capital of the Republic of Macedonia.
In 1928, she joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. After several months training, she was sent to India, and in 1931, she took her first religious vows as a nun. She taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta for almost 20 years. During years of teaching, something that always disturbed Mother Teresa was the severe poverty in Calcutta. Therefore, in 1948, she left the school in order to devote herself to helping poor people in Calcutta.
At the beginning, due to lack of fund, she opened an open-air school for poor children. Later when she joined voluntary social workers, she could absorb some funds for her charity works. In 1950, Teresa could get permission from the Holy See in Vatican to begin her order, “The Missionaries of Charity”, to help poor and people with disabilities and suffering from lack of love and care, which later became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. She transformed a Hindu temple into a place for homeless people and named it as the Home of the Pure Heart. She opened a heath center called Shanti Nagar (City of Peace) and The Missionaries of Charity later established clinics across Calcutta. She has also established the Children’s Home of the Immaculate Heart for homeless children and youth.
The Society of Missionaries soon spread around the world. During 1960s orphanages and hospices were opened in Indian cities, Venezuela, Italy, Tanzania and Austria, and in 1970s in different countries of Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the United States in order to help poor people around the world. In 1969 the Missionaries of Charity became an official International Association. For his humanitarian work, he became famous in the world and received several awards, from among them, the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize, Nehru Prize, Balzan Prize and the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nobel Prize: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1979/teresa/biographical