PROCLAMATION OF MOTHER TERESA AS A SAINT

Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born on 27 August 1910 in Skopje in Albanian family. Through Croatian catholic tradition, under the spiritual leadership of the father Franjo Jambreković, Jesuit pastor of the Church of Sacred Heart of Jesus in Skopje and in contact with Jesuit reports from India already at the age of 12 starts thinking about serving God in Bengal. She brings her final decision about her vocation on the day of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1928 in front of the black Mary’s figure in Letnica, Croatian enclave in Kosovo, whereupon she travels with her mother and sister to Zagreb where she prepares to go overseas; she leaves Croatian metropole on 13. October and she - who will become the mother of the world - takes leave of her earthy mother at the main Railway Station in Zagreb, whom she will never see again. This farewell is one of the most soul-stirring spiritual farewells in the last century. The way to Calcutta led over Dublin and Colombo; she finished the novitiate of Our Lady of Loreto in Darjeeling, she took her first wows in 1931 as the Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and her final Profession of Wows in 1937. Her long-time wish for new vocation within old one, inspired by the dramatic Indian experience, encourages her to make a step forward and serve the most vulnerable people from the bottom of society, until finally founding the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. In their houses in Calcutta, India and all over the world – which she managed as Mother Teresa – together with her sisters missionaries she devotedly took care of the ill and dying, of unwanted children and of all those in need and discarded. Her missionaries came to Croatia in 1979 and that same year at the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb Mother Teresa - having prayed on the grave of father Franjo Jambreković, said that this Croatian Jesuit brought her to Jesus. In Bengal she associates with the father Anto Gabrić, for whom she used to say that he was a sacred man; she wanted him to be the founder of her men Missionaries of Charity but his superiors did not permit it. Courageous and self-sacrificing, Mother Teresa became an immense example of love in the time without love and earned many world acknowledgments (Nobel Price for Peace in 1979; Grand Order of Queen Jelena in 1995); Croatian passport was handed over to her in Calcutta on her 85th birthday. She died at her home on 5. September 1997, she was proclaimed blessed in 2003 and saint on 4 September 2016 in Rome by the Pope Francis who said she was a symbol of God’s mercy in the saint year of the same name. She was an embodiment of by God given compassion and all what she and her missionaries were doing for those most in need, they were doing because in every wounded human being they saw Christ's suffering and his wounds. With her sisters missionaries Mother Teresa determinedly lived the greatest Jesus' command: „Love each other as I loved you. “ Croatian people embraced her from the very beginning as their own saint. Dr. Drago Štambuk, Ambassador