September 5 marks the International Day of Charity, established in honor of Mother Teresa and with the aim of raising awareness and mobilizing people, NGOs, and interested parties around the world to help others through voluntary and philanthropic activities.
The date was chosen to commemorate the anniversary of Mother Teresa’s passing in Calcutta, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 “for her work in overcoming poverty and suffering, which also constitute a threat to peace”.
The Albanian missionary Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje in 1910. In 1928, she went to India, where she dedicated herself to helping the poor. In 1948, she became an Indian citizen and founded the Missionaries of Charity order in Calcutta in 1950, gaining fame for her work among the poor and dying in that city.
For over 45 years, she served the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, overseeing the expansion of the Missionaries of Charity, initially in India and later in other countries, including shelters and homes for the poorest and homeless.
According to data from 1980, she cared for 7,500 children in 60 schools, treated 960,000 sick people in 213 hospitals, was the only person in the world who treated 47,000 leprosy victims in 54 clinics, took care of 3,400 elderly and abandoned individuals in 20 elderly homes, and had adopted 160 orphaned children.
Mother Teresa herself would declare: “I was born in Skopje, educated in London, I live in Calcutta, and I work for all the poor people in the world. My homeland is a small place called Albania.”
However, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania did not grant her a visa, not even to visit her mother who lived in Tirana, nor to attend her mother’s funeral in 1974, nor to see her grave. In fact, they did not even grant her a visa when her fame had spread worldwide in the early ‘90s.
Mother Teresa passed away on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87, after half a century of service to the abandoned in India and around the world. In 1997, shortly before her death, Mother Teresa had 4,000 sisters present in 610 missionary homes spread across 123 countries. She rests at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, which she founded in 1950.
In recognition of the role of charity in alleviating humanitarian crises and human suffering within and among nations, as well as the efforts of organizations and individuals engaged in charitable work, including the work of Mother Teresa, the United Nations General Assembly, through a resolution, designated September 5, the day of Mother Teresa’s death, as International Day of Charity.
On September 5, 2016, on the anniversary of her death, she was declared a Saint by Pope Francis.
