india

Updated: Aug 26, 2019 11:14 IST

Several nuns offered peace prayers at the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata on Monday morning to pay tribute to Mother Teresa on her 109th birth anniversary.

One of the nuns lighting candles at the grave of the Nobel Peace Prize winner said, “Mother was not concerned about success, fame or power; she only belonged to Jesus. She served the poorest of the poor across the world and became the defender of the right to life for the unborn and challenged children, who were perceived as the burden to the society.”

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa, was born in a family of ethnic Albanians in Skopje in 1910. She left her home at the age of 18 and later joined the “Sisters of Loreto” located in Irelands’s Rathfarnham.

She moved to India in the late 1920s and taught history and geography for 15 years at Kolkata’s St Mary’s High School.

In 1948, she left the church to aid the poor and needy in Kolkata. She laid the foundation stone of the Roman Catholic religious congregation in 1950, which was later became famous as the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa, a 1979 Nobel Laureate, refused to accept the prize money of $192,000 and asked the jury to contribute money for helping the poor in India.

Mother Teresa was declared Patron Saint of the Archdiocese of Calcutta in September 2017 by the Vatican Pope for her selfless service towards helping the underprivileged and poor in Kolkata.