Mother Teresa
  Mother Teresa, the Saint on Earth ,Saint of Gutters, Angel of Mercy, Living Saint of Calcutta (Kolkata) needs no introduction. Mother Teresa remembered on 12th death anniversary In Mother’s own words, “Keep the joy of loving the poor and share this joy with all you meet. Remember works of love are works of peace. God bless you." 
  When she was asked that what she got by helping the poor with unflinching dedication, she answered that once she brought a person half eaten by moths home. She tended the person’s wounds knowing that he would not live but before dying he gave her a smile and said, “I have lived like an animal. But I am dying like an angel.” This she said was her reward. I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?: Mother Teresa. 
  She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries. 
  Mother Teresa early life
  Mother Teresa  was born to Nikollë and Drana Bojaxhiu. on August 26, 1910, in Üsküb, Ottoman Empire (now Skopje). Her early name was Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Gonxhe meaning "rosebud" in Albanian). Her father  died when Agnes was about eight years old. After her father's death, her mother raised her as a Roman Catholic. She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary.  
  Agnes initially went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English, the language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach school children in India. She arrived in India in 1929, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains. She took her first religious vows as a nun on 
May 24, 1931. At that time she chose the name Teresa after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries. She took her solemn vows on May 14, 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in eastern Calcutta (now Kolkata). 
   She was deeply disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. See saw the  famine in 1943 that brought misery and death to the city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 that plunged the city into despair and horror. She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border, adopted Indian citizenship, and ventured out into the slums. 
  Teresa's first year was fraught with difficulties. She wrote in her diary, :“Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached.".  
  Missionaries of Charity. 
 On October 7, 1950 Teresa received Vatican permission to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity. Its mission was to care for  the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society.  It began  with 13 members in Calcutta; today it has more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centers worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine. 
  In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in  Calcutta, the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday)  Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith. Mother Teresa soon opened a home for those suffering from Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace) The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food.
  As the Missionaries of Charity took in increasing numbers of lost children, Mother Teresa felt the need to create a home for them. In 1955 she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth. The order soon began to attract both recruits and charitable donations, and by the 1960s had opened hospices, orphanages, and leper houses all over India. Mother Teresa then expanded the order throughout the globe. Its first house outside India opened in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters  Others followed in Rome, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968; during the 1970s the order opened houses and foundations in dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States. 
  By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries. Over the years, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centers around the world. By 2007 the Missionaries of Charity numbered approximately 450 brothers and 5,000 nuns worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries

   Death of the Angel of Mercy  
   On March 13, 1997, she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity and died on September 5, 1997. At the time of her death, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters, an associated brotherhood of 300 members, and over 100,000 lay volunteers, operating 610 missions in 123 countries. Mother Teresa lay in state in St Thomas, Kolkata for one week prior to her funeral, in September 1997. She was granted a state funeral by the Government in gratitude for her services to the poor of all religions in India.
  In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace." She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to laureates, and asked that the $192,000 funds be given to the poor in India. 
 Mother Teresa often said that the poorest of the poor were those who had no one to care for them and no one who knew them. And she often remarked with sadness and desolation of milliions of souls in the developed world whose spiritual poverty and loneliness was such an immense cause of suffering.. Mother Teresa was a fierce defender of the unborn saying "If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God's love."
  Mother Teresa remembered on 12th death anniversary.In Mother’s own words, “Keep the joy of loving the poor and share this joy with all you meet. Remember works of love are works of peace. God bless you."
  Railways to Launch Mother Express 
  In a special gesture, Indian Railways have decided to run an exhibition train named "Mother Express" to commemorate the birth centenary of Mother Teresa, the noted missionary social worker. Mother Teresa was a
Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata and who worked tirelessly in the service of the poor, sick, orphaned and destitute for over 47 years.
  The "Mother Express"- a tribute from Indian Railways - would showcase life and philanthropic deeds of this great soul who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honour, the "Bharat Ratna" in 1980 for her humanitarian work.

  Mother Teresa's centenary Mass held 
  Hundreds of Catholic nuns and slum dwellers in Kolkata have marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa on August 26, 2010. A special Mass was held at the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity - the order of nuns which Mother Teresa founded 60 years ago. Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia, on 26 August 1910. 

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