She was born on 26 August 1910, She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She arrived in India in 1929, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains, where she learnt Bengali and taught at the St. Teresa’s School. Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school; she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.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.
Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship; initially she started a school in Motijhil (Calcutta); It began as a small order with 13 members in Calcutta; by 1997 it had grown to more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres 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 space made available by the city of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart.
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 centres around the world. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx, New York; by 1984 the order operated 19 establishments throughout the country
Recognition :Mother Teresa had first been recognised by the Indian government more than a third of a century earlier when she was awarded the Padma Shri in 1962 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969. She continued to receive major Indian awards in subsequent years, including India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, in both 1972 and 1980. Her official biography was authored by an Indian civil servant, Navin Chawla, and published in 1992.In 1962; Mother Teresa received the Philippines-based Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, given for work in South or East Asia.
On 13 March 1997, she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September 1997
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