Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, known to most of us as Mother Teresa, was born on August 27th, 1910 in Skopje, Kosovo (now the Republic of Macedonia). Very little is known about her younger years, except that her father died when Agnes was only 8 years old, and her mother had to assume responsibility for the whole family.

When she was 18, she started to think of becoming a nun and soon left her parental home and travelled to India to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She never saw her mother or her sister again.

In 1929, after training in Dublin, she began her novitiate in Darjeeling, where two years later she took her first religious vows as a nun, choosing the name of Teresa (after  Terese of Lisieux). This was the day, when one chapter of her life closed and another one began.

Shortly after taking her vows Sister Teresa was sent to St. Mary’s High School for girls in a district of Calcutta, where she taught history and geography for 15 years. However, the protective environment of the school for the daughters of the wealthy could not hide the sufferings and poverty of the ordinary people of Calcutta. Sister Teresa’s heart ached every time she glimpsed outside the convent walls, and saw that no one was doing anything for the people dying on the streets from hunger and disease.

On 10th September 1946, while travelling from Calcutta to Darjeeling for the annual retreat, Teresa experienced what she later described as “the call within the call”. She was to leave the Loreto and “follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.”

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