Mother Teresa, the "saint of the gutters", was born in Macedonia on August 27, 1910, knew at the age of twelve that she wanted to be a missionary. At age 18 she left home to join the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish order with missions in India. After training in Dublin she was sent to India, where she taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. But the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she left teaching to work in the slums of Calcutta.

On October 7, 1950, she received permission to start her own order, ‘The Missionaries of Charity’, and in 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family. Kolkata (Calcutta) is where Mother Teresa started her Missionaries of Charity in 1950 to serve the poorest of the poor, the destitute, the suffering and the dying. She set up several homes for them - Nirmal Hriday (home for the dying), Shanti Nagar (home for the lepers) and Nirmal Shishu Bhavan (the children’s home). From humble beginnings at Kolkata the Sisters of the Poor now serve people the world over, though mainly in India. Today they work in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where, besides serving the poor, they do relief work during floods, epidemics and famine, as well as care for refugees, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers. Hundreds of people from all parts of the globe, particularly young men and women, come to help the Sisters of the Poor to serve orphans, the dying and the poor everyday. The Missionaries are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association in 1969.

Mother Teresa’s mission and legacy: To care for the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for, people that have become a burden to society and are shunned by everyone.

Besides the Nobel Peace prize (1979) Mother Teresa has received a number of awards, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) the Nehru Prize (1972), the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997 and her coffin rests under a plain tombstone in the Motherhouse in Calcutta. Mother Teresa was beatified in 2004.