What was Mother Teresa's childhood and education like?

Answer 1

Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Gonxhe meaning "rosebud" in Albanian) was born on August 26, 1910, in Üsküb, Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia). Although she was born on August 26, she considered August 27, the day she was baptized, to be her "true birthday." Although some sources state that she was 10 when her father died, in an interview with her brother, the Vatican documents her age at the time as "about eight". She was the youngest of the children of a family from Shkodër, Albania, born to Nikollë and Drana Bojaxhiu. Her father was involved in Albanian politics. In 1919, after a political meeting, which left Skopje out of Albania, he fell ill and died when Agnes was about eight years old. After her father's death, her mother raised her as a Roman Catholic. According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, in her early years Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service, and by age 12 was convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life. She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She never again saw her mother or sister. 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. Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. A famine in 1943 brought misery and death to the city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.