mother teresa biography

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Mother Teresa

By: History.com Editors

Published: February 26, 2024

Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun and founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, an organization that serves the poorest of the world’s population. An ethnic Albanian, born in what is now Macedonia, she lived and worked in India for nearly seven decades and became a citizen of that country. Her dedication to helping the poorest and sickest communities in Kolkata (then Calcutta) earned Mother Teresa widespread fame and numerous honors, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

Childhood and Move to India

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in what is now Skopje, North Macedonia; at the time it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Her family was of Albanian descent; her father, a reasonably successful merchant, died when she was just eight years old. After his death, the family struggled financially, but her mother instilled in young Agnes the importance of leading a Christian life and serving the less fortunate.

At the age of 12, Agnes first felt a calling to become a nun and devote her life to God. She left home at the age of 18 and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish Catholic order with missions in India. She received training near Dublin, where she began learning English, before traveling to Kolkata (then known as Calcutta), India in late 1928. She took her first vows as a nun in May 1931, and received a new name: Teresa, after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. In 1937, when she took her final vows, she became known as Mother Teresa.

'Call Within a Call'

From 1931 to 1948, Mother Teresa taught geography, history and catechism at St. Mary’s High School in Kolkata. She learned Bengali and Hindi, and eventually became the school’s principal. She also regularly visited the city’s slums and saw how suffering increased there during the devastating famine in 1943, which killed hundreds of thousands of people in India’s Bengal province.

In September 1946, Mother Teresa experienced what she described as a “call within a call” while riding on a train within India. In response, she sought and received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and live and work in the slums among the city’s sickest and poorest residents. With this move, Mother Teresa began wearing what would become her trademark garb: a white sari with a blue border, later adopted as the habit for the other nuns who worked alongside her.

The Order of the Missionaries of Charity 

In 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to found her own order, the Missionaries of Charity. The order’s purpose was to help the poor while living among them, sharing their experience and treating them with kindness, compassion and empathy, but never pity. Mother Teresa and those who joined her order built various facilities as an open-air school, housing for orphan children, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for terminally ill patients.

Mother Teresa’s order expanded over the years to serve communities outside Kolkata, and in 1965, received permission from Pope Paul VI to expand internationally. It opened its first center in the United States in 1971 in New York City, and would eventually reach around 90 countries.

As her work earned her international renown, Mother Teresa was awarded honors including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). In 1975, she was featured on the cover of TIME magazine and called one of the world’s “living saints.”

Nobel Peace Prize and Criticism

In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee cited as her “work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress in the world, which also constitute a threat to peace.” By that time, the Missionaries of Charity included more than 1,800 nuns and 120,000 lay workers, working in more than 80 centers in India and more than 100 other centers internationally. The following year, the Indian government awarded Mother Teresa the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honor.

Despite her numerous honors and widespread fame and admiration, Mother Teresa became a target of criticism as well. She held hard-line conservative views against divorce, contraception and abortion , as well as highly traditional views about the role of women in society. Some critics cast doubt on the level of hygiene and care at some of her order’s facilities; others accused her of trying to convert the people she served to Christianity.

Declining Health, Death and Sainthood 

After suffering a heart attack in 1989, Mother Teresa attempted to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity but was returned to that office by a nearly unanimous vote; hers was the only dissent. In 1997, her worsening health forced her permanent retirement, and the order chose an Indian-born nun, Sister Nirmala, to replace her. Mother Teresa suffered cardiac arrest and died on September 5, 1997, in Kolkata, just days after her 87th birthday.

As the world mourned Mother Teresa’s death, Pope John Paul II issued a special dispensation to speed the process of her canonization, or becoming a saint. In 2003, he beatified Mother Teresa after an Indian woman attributed her recovery from stomach cancer to Mother Teresa’s intercession, which the Vatican recognized as a miracle.

Twelve years later, the Holy See recognized a second miracle, after a Brazilian man recovered from a life-threatening brain infection after his family prayed to Mother Teresa. In September 2016, Pope Francis I officially declared Mother Teresa a saint 19 years after her death—a markedly fast pace for modern times.

“She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created,” the Pope said in the canonization ceremony, held in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City .

Mother Teresa - Biographical. The Nobel Prize .

Eric Pace, “Mother Teresa, Hope of the Despairing, Dies at 87.” The New York Times , September 6, 1997.

Kathryn Spink. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography , (Harper Collins, 1997).

Elisabetta Povoledo, “Mother Teresa Is Made a Saint by Pope Francis.” The New York Times , September 3, 2016.

Mallika Kapur and Sugam Pokharel, “‘Troubled individual:’ Mother Teresa no saint to her critics.” CNN , September 4, 2016.

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Biography Online

Biography Mother Teresa

“It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.”

– Mother Teresa. From: No Greater Love

Short Biography of Mother Teresa

On her arrival in India, she began by working as a teacher; however, the widespread poverty of Calcutta made a deep impression on her, and this led to her starting a new order called “The Missionaries of Charity”. The primary objective of this mission was to look after people, who nobody else was prepared to look after. Mother Teresa felt that serving others was a fundamental principle of the teachings of Jesus Christ. She often mentioned the saying of Jesus,

“Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.”

As Mother Teresa said herself:

“Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service .” – Mother Teresa

In 1952, she opened her first home for the dying, which allowed people to die with dignity. Mother Teresa often spent time with those who were dying. Some have criticised the lack of proper medical attention, and their refusal to give painkillers. Others say that it afforded many neglected people the opportunity to die knowing that someone cared.

Her work spread around the world. By 2013, there were 700 missions operating in over 130 countries. The scope of their work also expanded to include orphanages and hospices for those with terminal illnesses.

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

—- Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa never sought to convert those of another faith. Those in her hospices were given the religious rites appropriate to their faith. However, she had a very firm Catholic faith and took a strict line on abortion, the death penalty and divorce – even if her position was unpopular. Her whole life was influenced by her faith and religion, even though at times she confessed she didn’t feel the presence of God.

The Missionaries of Charity now has branches throughout the world including branches in the developed world where they work with the homeless and people affected by AIDS. In 1965, the organisation became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

In the 1960s, the life of Mother Teresa was brought to a wider public attention by Malcolm Muggeridge who wrote a book and produced a documentary called “ Something Beautiful for God ”.

In later years, she was more active in western developed countries. She commented that though the West was materially prosperous, there was often a spiritual poverty.

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”

-— Mother Teresa

When she was asked how to promote world peace, she replied,”Go home and love your family”.

Over the last two decades of her life, Mother Teresa suffered various health problems, but nothing could dissuade her from fulfilling her mission of serving the poor and needy. Until her very last illness she was active in travelling around the world to the different branches of The Missionaries of Charity. During her last few years, she met Princess Diana in the Bronx, New York. The two died within a week of each other.

Following Mother Teresa’s death, the Vatican began the process of beatification, which is the second step on the way to canonization and sainthood. Mother Teresa was formally beatified in October 2003 by Pope John Paul II . In September 2015, Pope Francis declared:

“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded,” “She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity. She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created.”

Mother Teresa was a living saint who offered a great example and inspiration to the world.

Awards given to Mother Teresa

• The first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. (1971)
• Kennedy Prize (1971)
• The Nehru Prize –“for the promotion of international peace and understanding”(1972)
• Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975),
• The Nobel Peace Prize (1979)
• States Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985)
• Congressional Gold Medal (1994)
• U Thant Peace Award 1994
• Honorary citizenship of the United States (November 16, 1996),

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Mother Teresa ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 18th May 2006. (Updated September 2016)

Mother Teresa Biography

Mother Teresa Biography at Amazon

No Greater Love – Mother Teresa

No Greater Love by Mother Teresa at Amazon

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External Links

• Mother Teresa Biography – Vatican
• Nobel Prize Biography

• World Biography

Mother Teresa Biography

Born: August 27, 1910 Skopje, Macedonia Died: September 5, 1997 Calcutta, India Albanian nun

Mother Teresa's devotional work among the poor and dying of India won her the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979. She is also known as the founder of the only Catholic religious order still growing in membership.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. At the time of her birth Skopje was located within the Ottoman Empire, a vast empire controlled by the Turks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Agnes was the last of three children born to Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, Albanian grocers. When Agnes was nine years old, her happy, comfortable, close-knit family life was upset when her father died. She attended public school in Skopje, and first showed religious interests as a member of a school society that focused on foreign missions (groups that travel to foreign countries to spread their religious beliefs). By the age of twelve she felt she had a calling to help the poor.

This calling took sharper focus through Mother Teresa's teenage years, when she was especially inspired by reports of work being done in India by Yugoslav Jesuit missionaries serving in Bengal, India. When she was eighteen, Mother Teresa left home to join a community of Irish nuns, the Sisters of Loretto, who had a mission in Calcutta, India. She received training in Dublin, Ireland, and in Darjeeling, India, taking her first religious vows in 1928 and her final religious vows in 1937.

One of Mother Teresa's first assignments was to teach, and eventually to serve as principal, in a girls' high school in Calcutta. Although the school was close to the slums (terribly poor sections), the students were mainly wealthy. In 1946 Mother Teresa experienced what she called a second vocation or "call within a call." She felt an inner urging to leave the convent life (life of a nun) and work directly with the poor. In 1948 the Vatican (residence of the pope in Vatican City, Italy) gave her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and to start a new work under the guidance of the Archbishop of Calcutta.

Founding the Missionaries of Charity

To prepare to work with the poor, Mother Teresa took an intensive medical training with the American Medical Missionary Sisters in Patna, India. Her first venture in Calcutta was to gather unschooled children from the slums and start to teach them. She quickly attracted both financial support and volunteers. In 1950 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 (purity), and obedience, but they added a fourth vow—to give free service to the most poor.

The Missionaries of Charity received considerable publicity, and Mother Teresa used it to benefit her work. In 1957 they began to work with lepers (those suffering from leprosy, a terrible infectious disease) 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. Before long they had a presence in more than twenty-two Indian cities. Mother Teresa also visited other countries such as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Australia, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Italy to begin new foundations.

Dedication to the very poor

Mother Teresa's group continued to expand throughout the 1970s, opening new missions in places such as Amman, Jordan; London, England; and New York, New York. She received both recognition and financial support through such awards as the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize and a grant from the Joseph Kennedy Jr. Foundation. Benefactors, or those donating money, regularly would arrive to support works in progress or to encourage the Sisters to open new ventures.

By 1979 Mother Teresa's groups had more than two hundred different operations in over twenty-five countries around the world, with dozens more ventures on the horizon. The same year she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1986 she persuaded President Fidel Castro (1926–) to allow a mission in Cuba. The characteristics of all of Mother Teresa's works—shelters for the dying, orphanages, and homes for the mentally ill—continued to be of service to the very poor.

In 1988 Mother Teresa sent her Missionaries of Charity into Russia and opened a home for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS; an incurable disease that weakens the immune system) patients in San Francisco, California. In 1991 she returned home to Albania and opened a home in Tirana, the capital. At this time there were 168 homes operating in India.

Saint Teresa

Despite the appeal of this saintly work, all commentators remarked that Mother Teresa herself was the most important reason for the growth of her order and the fame that came to it. Unlike many "social critics," she did not find it necessary to attack the economic or political structures of the cultures that were producing the terribly poor people she was serving. For her, the primary rule was a constant love, and when social critics or religious reformers (improvers) chose to demonstrate anger at the evils of structures underlying poverty and suffering, that was between them and God.

In the 1980s and 1990s Mother Teresa's health problems became a concern. She suffered a heart attack while visiting Pope John Paul II (1920–) in 1983. She had a near fatal heart attack in 1989 and began wearing a pacemaker, a device that regulates the heartbeat.

In March 1997, after an eight week selection process, sixty-three-year-old Sister Nirmala was named as the new leader of the Missionaries of Charity. Although Mother Teresa had been trying to cut back on her duties for some time because of her health, she stayed on in an advisory role to Sister Nirmala.

Mother Teresa celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday in August, and died shortly thereafter of a heart attack on September 5, 1997. The world grieved her loss and one mourner noted, "It was Mother herself who poor people respected. When they bury her, we will have lost something that cannot be replaced."

Legacy of Mother Teresa

In appearance Mother Teresa was both tiny and energetic. Her face was quite wrinkled, but her dark eyes commanded attention, radiating an energy and intelligence that shone without expressing nervousness or impatience. Conservatives within the Catholic Church sometimes used her as a symbol of traditional religious values that they felt were lacking in their churches. By most accounts she was a saint for the times, and several almost adoring books and articles started to canonize (declare a saint) her in the 1980s and well into the 1990s. She herself tried to deflect all attention away from what she did to either the works of her group or to the God who was her inspiration.

The Missionaries of Charity, who had brothers as well as sisters by the mid-1980s, are guided by the constitution Mother Teresa wrote for them. They have their vivid memo ries of the love for the poor that created the phenomenon of Mother Teresa in the first place. The final part of her story will be the lasting impact her memory has on the next generations of missionaries, as well as on the world as a whole.

For More Information

Egan, Eileen. Such a Vision of the Street. Gar den City, NY: Doubleday, 1985.

Le Joly, Edward. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1983.

Mother Teresa. In My Own Words. Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1996.

Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something Beautiful for God. New York: Walker and Company, 1984.

Spink, Kathryn. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1997.

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Biography of Mother Teresa, 'The Saint of the Gutters'

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Mother Teresa (August 26, 1910–September 5, 1997) founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order of nuns dedicated to helping the poor. Begun in Calcutta, India, the Missionaries of Charity grew to help the poor, dying, orphans, lepers, and AIDS sufferers in more than 100 countries. Mother Teresa's selfless effort to help those in need has caused many to regard her as a model humanitarian. She was canonized a saint in 2016.

• Known for : Founding the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order of nuns dedicated to helping the poor
• Also known as : Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (birth name), "The Saint of the Gutters"
• Born : Aug. 26, 1910 in Üsküp, Kosovo Vilayet,  Ottoman Empire
• Parents : Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu
• Died : September 5, 1997 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India
• Honors : Canonized (pronounced a saint) in September 2016
• Notable quote : "We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something."

Early Years

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa, was the third and final child born to her Albanian Catholic parents, Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, in the city of Skopje (a predominantly Muslim city in the Balkans). Nikola was a self-made, successful businessman and Dranafile stayed home to take care of the children.

When Mother Teresa was about 8 years old, her father died unexpectedly. The Bojaxhiu family was devastated. After a period of intense grief, Dranafile, suddenly a single mother of three children, sold textiles and hand-made embroidery to bring in some income.

Both before Nikola's death and especially after it, the Bojaxhiu family held tightly to their religious beliefs. The family prayed daily and went on pilgrimages annually.

When Mother Teresa was 12 years old, she began to feel called to serve God as a nun. Deciding to become a nun was a very difficult decision. Becoming a nun not only meant giving up the chance to marry and have children, but it also meant giving up all her worldly possessions and her family, perhaps forever.

For five years, Mother Teresa thought hard about whether or not to become a nun. During this time, she sang in the church choir, helped her mother organize church events, and went on walks with her mother to hand out food and supplies to the poor.

When Mother Teresa was 17, she decided to become a nun. Having read many articles about the work Catholic missionaries were doing in India, Mother Teresa was determined to go there. Mother Teresa applied to the Loreto order of nuns, based in Ireland but with missions in India.

In September 1928, 18-year-old Mother Teresa said goodbye to her family to travel to Ireland and then on to India. She never saw her mother or sister again.

Becoming a Nun

It took more than two years to become a Loreto nun. After spending six weeks in Ireland learning the history of the Loreto order and to study English, Mother Teresa then traveled to India, where she arrived on Jan. 6, 1929.

After two years as a novice, Mother Teresa took her first vows as a Loreto nun on May 24, 1931.

As a new Loreto nun, Mother Teresa (known then only as Sister Teresa, a name she chose after St. Teresa of Lisieux) settled into the Loreto Entally convent in Kolkata (previously called Calcutta ) and began teaching history and geography at the convent schools.

Usually, Loreto nuns were not allowed to leave the convent; however, in 1935, 25-year-old Mother Teresa was given a special exemption to teach at a school outside of the convent, St. Teresa's. After two years at St. Teresa's, Mother Teresa took her final vows on May 24, 1937, and officially became "Mother Teresa."

Almost immediately after taking her final vows, Mother Teresa became the principal of St. Mary's, one of the convent schools, and was once again restricted to staying within the convent's walls.

'A Call Within a Call'

For nine years, Mother Teresa continued as the principal of St. Mary's. Then on Sept. 10, 1946, a day now annually celebrated as "Inspiration Day," Mother Teresa received what she described as a "call within a call."

She had been traveling on a train to Darjeeling when she received an "inspiration," a message that told her to leave the convent and help the poor by living among them.

For two years, Mother Teresa patiently petitioned her superiors for permission to leave the convent to follow her call. It was a long and frustrating process.

To her superiors, it seemed dangerous and futile to send a single woman out into the slums of Kolkata. However, in the end, Mother Teresa was granted permission to leave the convent for one year to help the poorest of the poor.

In preparation for leaving the convent, Mother Teresa purchased three cheap, white, cotton saris, each one lined with three blue stripes along its edge. (This later became the uniform for the nuns at Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.)

After 20 years with the Loreto order, Mother Teresa left the convent on Aug. 16, 1948.

Rather than going directly to the slums, Mother Teresa first spent several weeks in Patna with the Medical Mission Sisters to obtain some basic medical knowledge. Having learned the basics, 38-year-old Mother Teresa felt ready to venture out into the slums of Calcutta, India in December 1948.

Founding the Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa started with what she knew. After walking around the slums for a while, she found some small children and began to teach them. She had no classroom, no desks, no chalkboard, and no paper, so she picked up a stick and began drawing letters in the dirt. Class had begun.

Soon after, Mother Teresa found a small hut that she rented and turned it into a classroom. Mother Teresa also visited the children's families and others in the area, offering a smile and limited medical help. As people began to hear about her work, they gave donations.

In March 1949, Mother Teresa was joined by her first helper, a former pupil from Loreto. Soon she had 10 former pupils helping her.

At the end of Mother Teresa's provisionary year, she petitioned to form her order of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity. Her request was granted by Pope Pius XII; the Missionaries of Charity was established on Oct. 7, 1950.

Helping the Sick, Dying, Orphaned, and Lepers

There were millions of people in need in India. Droughts, the caste system , India's independence, and partition all contributed to the masses of people that lived on the streets. India's government was trying, but they could not handle the overwhelming multitudes that needed help.

While the hospitals were overflowing with patients that had a chance to survive, Mother Teresa opened a home for the dying, called Nirmal Hriday ("Place of the Immaculate Heart"), on Aug. 22, 1952.

Each day, nuns would walk through the streets and bring people who were dying to Nirmal Hriday, located in a building donated by the city of Kolkata. The nuns would bathe and feed these people and then place them in a cot. They were given the opportunity to die with dignity, with the rituals of their faith.

In 1955, the Missionaries of Charity opened their first children's home (Shishu Bhavan), which cared for orphans. These children were housed and fed and given medical aid. When possible, the children were adopted out. Those not adopted were given an education, learned a trade skill, and found marriages.

In India's slums, huge numbers of people were infected with leprosy, a disease that can lead to major disfiguration. At the time, lepers (people infected with leprosy) were ostracized, often abandoned by their families. Because of the widespread fear of lepers, Mother Teresa struggled to find a way to help these neglected people.

Mother Teresa eventually created a Leprosy Fund and a Leprosy Day to help educate the public about the disease and established a number of mobile leper clinics (the first opened in September 1957) to provide lepers with medicine and bandages near their homes.

By the mid-1960s, Mother Teresa had established a leper colony called Shanti Nagar ("The Place of Peace") where lepers could live and work.

International Recognition

Just before the Missionaries of Charity celebrated its 10th anniversary, they were given permission to establish houses outside of Calcutta, but still within India. Almost immediately, houses were established in Delhi, Ranchi, and Jhansi; more soon followed.

For their 15th anniversary, the Missionaries of Charity was given permission to establish houses outside of India. The first house was established in Venezuela in 1965. Soon there were Missionaries of Charity houses all around the world.

As Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity expanded at an amazing rate, so did international recognition for her work. Although Mother Teresa was awarded numerous honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she never took personal credit for her accomplishments. She said it was God's work and that she was just the tool used to facilitate it.

Controversy

With international recognition also came critique. Some people complained that the houses for the sick and dying were not sanitary, that those treating the sick were not properly trained in medicine, that Mother Teresa was more interested in helping the dying go to God than in potentially helping cure them. Others claimed that she helped people so that she could convert them to Christianity.

Mother Teresa also caused much controversy when she openly spoke against abortion and birth control. Others critiqued her because they believed that with her new celebrity status, she could have worked to end the poverty rather than soften its symptoms.

Later Years and Death

Despite the controversy, Mother Teresa continued to be an advocate for those in need. In the 1980s, Mother Teresa, already in her 70s, opened Gift of Love homes in New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for AIDS sufferers.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Mother Teresa's health deteriorated, but she still traveled the world, spreading her message.

When Mother Teresa, age 87, died of heart failure on Sept. 5, 1997 (just five days after Princess Diana 's death), the world mourned her passing. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to see her body, while millions more watched her state funeral on television.

After the funeral, Mother Teresa's body was laid to rest at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata. When Mother Teresa passed away, she left behind more than 4,000 Missionary of Charity Sisters at 610 centers in 123 countries.

Legacy: Becoming a Saint

After Mother Teresa's death, the Vatican began the lengthy process of canonization. After an Indian woman was cured of her tumor after praying to Mother Teresa, a miracle was declared, and the third of the four steps to sainthood was completed on Oct. 19, 2003, when the Pope approved Mother Teresa's beatification, awarding Mother Teresa the title "Blessed."​

The final stage required to become a saint involves a second miracle. On December 17, 2015, Pope Francis recognized the medically inexplicable waking (and healing) of an extremely ill Brazilian man from a coma on December 9, 2008, just minutes before he was to undergo emergency brain surgery as being caused by the intervention of Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa was canonized (pronounced a saint) on September 4, 2016.

• Coppa, Frank J. “ Pius XII. ”  Encyclopædia Britannica , Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 5 Oct. 2018.
• “ The Nobel Peace Prize 1979 .”  Nobelprize.org.
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