Mother Teresa: "Angel of Mercy"

Art from the heart
By the late 1970s, Mother Teresa was known around the world as the Living Saint. Here she receives the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize from Professor John Sanness.

The order she founded, the Missionaries of Charity, grew to include 3,000 nuns and 400 brothers in 87 countries, tending to the poor and dying in the slums of 160 cities.
In 1979, she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of "the throwaway of society". She asked that the grand gala dinner be cancelled and the proceeds be given to the poor of Calcutta. She decided as early as 12 that she wanted to become a missionary in India. At the age of 19, she joined the Irish order of Loreto where she was taught English. In 1929 she was sent to India.
Mother Teresa - she took the name from Therese of Lisieux - began teaching at a school in Darjeeling, then in Calcutta. Then, in 1946, amid the communal strife that gripped India, she heard her "call within" to help the poor while living among them. She spent 17 years teaching and was also the principal of St Mary's high school in the city.