Who Was Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Why Tell Her Story to Children

Her name was Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, and she was born in Skopje on 26 August 1910, into a Catholic Albanian family. Her mother chose the name Gonxhe, which means flower bud in Albanian. Her father, Nikollë, was a businessman and one of the city's councillors; he died suddenly when she was eight, and from then on her mother raised the children alone, working as an embroiderer and teaching them to share what little they had with those who had even less.

And she grew up in a deeply religious household, amid the hymns and activities of the local parish. At twelve, she first felt the desire to devote her life to religion, having listened to stories told by missionaries setting off for Bengal. It took another six years for that feeling to become a decision: in 1928 she left home to join the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish religious order with missions in India. She never saw her mother again.

After training in Dublin and Darjeeling, she arrived in India in January 1929. She took her vows and the name Teresa, in honour of Thérèse of Lisieux, and taught for seventeen years at St Mary's High School in Calcutta, eventually becoming its headmistress, behind convent walls that kept her apart from the poverty outside.

On 10 September 1946, travelling by train to Darjeeling for her annual retreat, she experienced what she herself called the call within the call: the certainty that she had to leave the convent to live among the poorest, caring for them and staying by their side. It took two years to obtain the Church's permission. In 1948 she stepped out for the first time wearing a plain white sari edged in blue, the habit she would wear for the rest of her life.

In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity together with twelve fellow sisters, a congregation devoted to those who had no one else. In 1952 she opened Nirmal Hriday in Calcutta, meaning home of the pure heart, a place where people found dying in the streets could be cared for and allowed to die with dignity. The congregation grew over the decades to thousands of sisters working in dozens of countries, and the Missionaries of Charity still carry on the same work today.

And in 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize, giving the entire sum to the poor of Calcutta and turning down the traditional laureates' banquet. She died in the same city on 5 September 1997. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 19 October 2003, and Pope Francis canonised her on 4 September 2016, at a ceremony attended by fifteen hundred homeless people brought in from across Italy.

One of the books in the Little Great Heroes series is dedicated to her, available in Italian, English and Spanish. It tells children the story of Anjezë's life from when she was a child herself, in a home where food was scarce and love was not.

What might happen if a child started, every day, looking at the people no one else looks at?