Mother Theresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje in Macedonia, on 26th August 1910, her family being of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God and knew that she had to be a missionary, to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on 24th May 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Theresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made a lasting and deep impression on her and in 1948 she received permission from her superiors, to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds whatsoever, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for children of the slums. She was soon joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work. Mother Theresa had been granted permission to leave the order by Pope Pius XII. She had then undertaken medical training, the better to prepare herself for her new mission. Mother Theresa was called to as a ‘living saint.’ This tiny figure captured the imagination of the world with her dedication to the poor, particularly in Calcutta where she established her first shelter to cope with the thousands of "pavement people". No matter destitute or diseased they may have been, the poor were welcomed without exception. An experience some fifty years earlier had been significant. Mother Theresa had found a woman "half eaten by maggots and rats" lying in front of a Calcutta hospital. This very special nun sat with the woman until she died. A diminutive Roman Catholic nun, she began a campaign for a shelter for people to die with dignity. Until her death she made a mission of caring for the human cast-offs the world wanted to forget. Mother Theresa and other nuns searched for people who were sick or dying on the streets in Calcutta and helped and cared for them at the centre they had established. Later, each centre was placed under an organization called the Missionaries of Charity. The centres helped to treat blind people, lepers, the dying, the disabled and the old. Mother Theresa also started orphanages and schools for the poor. Known as ‘The Saint of the Gutters” she had once said “I see God in every human being.” In 1952, Mother Theresa opened the 'Nirmal Hriday', Home for Dying Destitutes, in a dormitory, formerly a Kali temple hostel, which was donated by the city of Calcutta. The Missionaries of Charity began to treat lepers there in 1957. Two years later, they opened the first house outside Calcutta, in Drachi. Soon afterward, they expanded to Delhi and other cities. Though the Calcutta clinic was the centre of Mother Theresa’s growing charity and the place she called home, her work expanded the globe, with more than 500 missions in 120 countries. Wherever people needed comfort, she was there: among the hungry in Ethiopia, the radiation victims at Chernobyl, the rubble of Armenia’s earthquake, in the squalid townships of South Africa. Her order opened one of the first homes for AIDS victims. Though not intentional, Mother Theresa became famous for caring for the world's outcasts: the dying, the impoverished, the new-born and the un-born, lepers, the lonely, those stricken with AIDS. People around the world called her ‘Angel of Mercy’ and in India she was simply ‘The Mother.’ Her mission was to serve and free the downtrodden from hunger, pain and suffering. She was in the eyes of the people a simple and truly humane person. Any one who held her hands said it was a unique spiritual experience. She drew larger crowds and invited greater affection than any politician, testimony of course to her integrity and her humility. In 1979, Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Price Laureate. An excerpt from that acceptance speech sums up Mother Theresa perfectly: "I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." Mother Theresa, this charismatic nun, died on 5th September 1997 at the age of 87 in Calcutta. She was revered by many around the world and received tributes from world leaders. Tens of thousands of people lined the route of Mother Teresa's funeral procession in Calcutta a week later.