MOTHER TERESA

A list of achievements by one of the humblest women who ever lived:

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910.

At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ.

At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India.

After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun.

Over the next 43 years, she set up schools, dispensaries, homes for abandoned children, for the leprosy afflicted, and for the destitute and dying.

By 1990, 456 centres were established in more than one hundred countries. During that year, 500,000 families were fed, 20,000 slum children were taught in 124 schools, and 90,000 leprosy patients were treated. Mother Teresa was once asked if there was any place she had not reached. She replied:

‘If there are poor on the moon, we shall go there too!’

Understandably, she received a ton of awards: 'Padmashree Award' (in 1962 from the President of India), 'John F. Kennedy International Award-1971', 'Bharat Ratna' (Jewel of India), 'Order of Merit' from Queen Elizabeth, 'Nobel Peace Prize - 1979' (the prize money of which, she had requested to be donated to poor people), 'The Pope John XXIII Peace Prize', 'Medal of Freedom' (which is highest US Civilian award).

THE GOAT!

It’s hard to believe that Mother Teresa was tormented by a crisis of belief for 50 years.

Her letters and diaries present a completely different picture of the nun and Nobel peace prize winner from her public image as a woman confident of her faith. Biographies would have to be rewritten to take the revelation into account, it was said in Rome just after her death.

The previously unpublished material is to be brought out as a volume in Italy. It was collected by Roman Catholic authorities in Calcutta after her death at the age of 87. Mother Teresa wrote in 1958: "My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains."

Because she was "forever smiling", people thought "my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing and that my intimacy with God and union with his will fill my heart. If only they knew . . ." She said in another letter: "The damned of Hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. "In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.’