Who is Mother Teresa?

Many thousands of pilgrims have already arrived in Rome for the canonisation of Blessed Mother Teresa, which takes place this Sunday, 4 September, 2016. Mother Teresa will be officially proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis at a Mass in St Peter's Square. She has already been acclaimed a saint not just by Christians, but by many from other faiths.

Mother Teresa once said herself: "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu‎ of Albanian parents on ‎August 26, 1910, in Skopje, in ‎what ‎is ‎Macedonia today, Mother Teresa came to eastern India's Kolkata city, formerly Calcutta, in ‎‎1929, as a missionary of the Sisters of Loreto. Later, in what she described as a 'call within a call', she founded ‎her Missionaries of Charity congregation in 1950 to serve Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor. She obtained Indian citizenship the following year. ‎Mother Teresa earned 124 national as well as international honours for her works of mercy, ‎including ‎the ‎Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died on 5 September ‎‎1997 at the age of 87. ‎St ‎John ‎Paul II declared her Blessed in the Vatican, on October 19, 2003. ‎ ‎

Mother Teresa spoke to Anto Akkara on November 17, 1995 at the Missionaries of Charity's 'Nirmala Sishu Bhavan' centre in New Delhi.

Read a transcript of the interview on the Vatican News Service here: www.news.va/en/news/an-interview-with-mother-teresa