Her work touched many…
Born to Albanian parents in Skopje on August 27th 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bejaxhiu, spent her life with the poor in India.As a child, she was extremely kind and gentle and helped whoever she saw in need. At a very young age she made a promise to her father that she would always help others in need.
At the age of twelve, she made a decision to become a nun. Her ambition was to help all those in need. Her father agreed that it was a marvelous idea, but explained to her that her life as nun might mean a lonely life in a monastery. She told him that she didn’t mind this and so, some years later, when she was eighteen, she went to Ireland and became a nun.
After a few months of training in Dublin, the Church sent her to Calcutta in 1931. When she first went to India, she wanted to work with poor people, but the Church didn’t let her. So, she taught in St. Mary’s High School until 1946.
In the winter of 1948 she began her work by bringing hungry and dying people into a home where they could find love and care and finally die in peace.
She became an Indian citizen later that year. This allowed her to do more wonderful work. In 1950, she started a charity organization in Calcutta to feed the hungry and look after the sic. She never once refused anyone help, and her work made a difference to the lives of the desperate people she lived beside.
During this time, she saw many cases of poverty and suffering and knew that she had to do something to help. So, she asked for permission to leave the school and sped her life working among the poorest of the poor in the streets of Calcutta. Her love of people made an impression on everyone who met her as she took care of theme in their suffering and pain. Although she was always busy she still made time for everyone.
Though Calcutta was the centre of her charity, and the place she called home, her work reached the four corners of the earth. Throughout her life she has become world famous for the hundreds of centres she has helped to build in 120 countries all around the world. Wherever people needed help and comfort, she was there, among the hungry in Ethiopia, or in the ruins of Armenian’s earthquake where she saved thousands of lives.
At the Nobel Prize winning ceremony in 1979, where she wore her famous blue sari, she asked the Nobel organization not to have a dinner for her and to use the money “to feed 400 poor children in India for a year”.
This act showed what kind of generous person she was. In 1997 she caught pneumonia and when she died some time later famous people from all over the world came to pay their respects to a brilliant and brave woman.
Seitanioti Helen
