Mother Teresa was only 18 years old at the time, and came to India to begin her novitiate in the Order of Sisters of Loreto.
On this day the Blessed Mother Teresa arrived to India for the first time in her life, a country where she would later do much good for the poorest layers of the population. She was only 18 years old at the time, and came to India to begin her novitiate in the Order of Sisters of Loreto.
Blessed Mother Teresa was born in the Macedonian city of Skopje, in an Albanian Catholic family. Her birth name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Interestingly, the pastor of her parish of Sacred Heart in her hometown of Skopje was the Croatian Jesuit Franjo Jambreković.
From her birthplace of Skopje she came to India by traveling first via Zagreb to Ireland, where she studied the English language, which was required for her to work in India. After arriving to India, her first place of residence was Calcutta – one of the largest cities in India. Today Calcutta is, in a local Bengali language, called Kolkata and is the third largest city in India – after Mumbai and Delhi. Today more than 14 million people live in the wider area of Kolkata. It is interesting that Mother Teresa received the official title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta after beatification.
