GIBRALTAR STAMPS OFFER: SPEND £50 GET £5 OFF
Shipping: GBP £8.61 Worldwide shipping fee.

Mother Teresa`s 100th Birth Anniversary

Set
GBP £0.93
Sheetlets
GBP £8.40
About Mother Teresa`s 100th Birth Anniversary

Mother Teresa was born into an Albanian Catholic family in Skopje on 26 August 1910 and given the name Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. At the age of 12 she felt God calling her to devote her life to Him as a missionary. In September 1928, when she was 18 years old, she joined the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, in Ireland. Choosing St. Thérèse of Lisieux as her patron saint, she took the name "Sister Teresa“. From Ireland she was sent to India, arriving in Calcutta in 1929. Two years later she made her first profession of vows and was sent to teach at St. Mary School, Entally. On 24 May 1937 she made her final profession of vows and was henceforth known as "Mother Teresa“.

On 10 September 1946, during a train journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling, she received, as she said, "a call within a call“ to serve the poorest of the poor. After obtaining all necessary permissions, she left the Loreto order two years later and began the work among the very poor on the streets of Calcutta. Her religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, officially came into existence on 7 October 1950. Mother Teresa’s life and work proclaimed the dignity of every human life, the joy that comes from loving one another and the value of doing small things with faith and love. In recognition of her works of love, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

After Mother Teresa’s death, another side of her life was discovered. Her interior life had been marked by the experience of a deep, painful feeling of being separated from God, of even being rejected by Him, with an ever increasing longing for His love. The "painful night“ of her soul, which began at the time she started the work with the poor and which was to last to the end of her life, brought her to a deep and strong union with God. On 5 September 1997 the earthly life of Mother Teresa came to an end. Her tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for people of all faiths, poor and rich alike. Two years after her death, the process of her Cause of Canonization began, and in 2003 Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa.