Matters India reporter
Kolkata, Aug. 26, 2019: Kolkata celebrated 109th birth anniversary of Mother Teresa with special prayers at her tomb in the Mother House at 54A Lower Circular Road and at Archbishop’s House where her bronze statue was installed to mark her canonization in 2016.
Coincidentally, the day also marks the brithday of Roman Catholic Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Kolkata.
Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The following day, she was baptized as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.
Mother Teresa left her home at the age of 18 and later joined the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the order popularly known as Loreto Sisters located in Irelands’s Rathfarnham.
Young Sister Teresa arrived in India on 6 January 1929 and taught history and geography for 15 years at Calcutta’s Loreto St Mary’s Girls High School.
In 1948, Sister Teresa decided to leave the Loreto order and adopted a lifestyle in slums to aid the poor and the needy found in the streets of Calcutta.
On 7 October 1950, she made her profession as a Missionary of Charity nun and founded the Roman Catholic religious congregation which is now popularly known as the Missionaries of Charity.
St. Teresa of Kolkata received a number of honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.
Pope Benedict XVI declared her a saint on 4 September 2016, and the anniversary of her death (5 September 1997) is her feast day