Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1979, at the Aula of the University of Oslo, Norway, honouring her contribution towards mitigating the struggle to overcome poverty and distress in the world. By 1979, the Missionaries of Charity founded by her had operated 495 mobile clinics serving more than 4 million patients, 103 leprosy centres serving more than 258,000 patients, 8 leprosy rehabilitation centres serving 1,942 patients, 63 homes for the destitute dying and ill serving 7,632, 49 homes for abandoned children serving 2,770, 107 slum schools serving 15,815 children, 120 feeding centres serving 165,338, and 64 malnutrition centres serving 10,988, as well as night shelters, child-care centres, and homes for alcoholics and drug addicts.
Mother Teresa’s first major responsibility in 1931, after her profession as a sister of the Loretto Congregation, was to teach in St. Mary’s Bengali Medium School for girls in Kolkata. She undertook this role with love and dedication until she left the Loretto Sisters in 1948 to found the Missionaries of Charity.
Mother Teresa opened her first slum school on December 21, 1948, in Moti Jihl (Pearl Lake). Most of the children in Moti Jihl were malnourished. Teresa’s was an “open-air” school, which she began with no slates, chalk, or blackboard. Within a few short weeks, more than forty children started attending the school every day.
On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa’s New Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was approved as the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese. Her Nirmal Hriday (Place of the Immaculate Heart) Home for Dying Destitutes was founded in 1952. Mother Teresa once found a woman dying near a garbage dump with her body half eaten by rats and ants. Teresa took the woman to a hospital and refused to leave until the hospital admitted the woman. That very same day, Teresa went to the municipal government and offered to take care of the starving and those dying in the streets in return for the gift of a “house” to care for them. Nirmal Hriday was born from the love and care of one woman who refused to permit any “child of God” to die like an animal in the gutter.
In 1955, Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity opened Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children’s Home to take care of homeless children and provided them with food, shelter and medical care. Most of the children suffered from undernutrition and tuberculosis. Usha, a baby girl, was just one of the reasons for the emergence of Shishu Bhavan. When Mother Teresa brought the child’s mother — an emaciated, starving, feverish young girl — in from the streets, Usha was one continuous sore. Usha’s mother soon died, but the sisters nursed Usha back to health.
Shishu Bhavan also provided food, such as rice and bulgur wheat, to thousands of destitute families along with free basic medical treatment and medicines to thousands of sick adults every month. The sisters distributed an array of medicines to multiple centres devoted to the treatment of leprosy (Hansen’s disease) and provided free treatment to more than 13,000 leprosy victims.
In India, a large number of people were infected with leprosy, a disease that can cause major disfiguration. Mother Teresa created a Leprosy Fund and a Leprosy Day to help educate the general public about leprosy since many people feared the contagious disease. She also established various mobile leper clinics to provide the infected with medicine and bandages. Missionaries of Charity had almost 4000 sisters working in 610 foundations, in 450 centres in 123 countries across the six continents. The congregation had various hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children’s and family counselling programmes, personal helpers, orphanages, and schools operating under it.
On December 10, 1979, in her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa said, “I am sure this award is going to bring an understanding love between the rich and the poor. And this is what Jesus has insisted so much, that is why Jesus came to earth, to proclaim the good news to the poor. And through this award and through all of us gathered here together, we are wanting to proclaim the good news to the poor that God loves them, that we love them, that they are somebody to us, that they too have been created by the same loving hand of God, to love and to be loved. Our poor people are great people, are very lovable people, they don’t need our pity and sympathy, they need our understanding love. They need our respect; they need that we treat them with dignity”.
Mother Teresa accomplished her vision to help the needy, with the help of the women in her mission. Her journey faced many hurdles from men of religious and political influence. She faced humiliation when she went to ask for alms for her poor people. In spite of all the roadblocks, she gave hope to her fellow sisters in situations of distress.
