Mother Teresa - the saint from Skopje,
the citizen of the world.

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Citizen of Skopje, citizen of the world

Gonxha Agnesa Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa or the Mother from Calcutta, was born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, now the Republic of Macedonia, which was a part of the huge Turkish Empire at the beginning of the century. The contradictions about the personality of this extraordinary woman, who unselfishly devoted her whole life to the cause of humanity, date back to the day she was born. According to certain sources, she was born on 27 August and baptized in the Catholic Church Sacred Heart in Skopje. This date is taken as her birthday.
Gonxha Bojaxhiu, in remote India and impoverished Calcutta, as Mother Teresa, in 1950 with the blessing of the Pope created the Missionaries of Charity , a mission that is today covered by over 3,840 sisters living and working in 561 houses. Gonxha started to dream about her assignment on the cobblestone streets of old Skopje. Mother Teresa, modest, energetic, remarkably warm, with kindness in her thoughts and behaviour, represented a synonym for all that is good, noble and honest in helping those who needed it most. This was something she did with the greatest sincerity. For many, Mother Teresa was a saint according to the old canon rules: pious, gentle, conscientious, strong, virtuous, simple.

Gonxcha origin

Gonxha Agnesa Bojaxiu was born in the centre of Skopje, at the present Commercial Center, in 10 Pop Kochina Street at that time, in the so-called Latin Quarter, not far from the Vllachian neighborhood on the right bank of the Vardar River. She was Albanian of Roman Catholic religion then known as LatMi, and the name Gonxha means a flowerbud, both in Albanian and Turldsh.
This young girl, Gonxha, overwhelmed with enthusiasm, left Skopje, the town in which she was born, and headed off to unexplored India to devote her entire life to humanity. She did a magnificent job for the poorest of the poor, and her slogan was - The world is not only starving for bread, but also for love. She was gentle, humane and energetic, often called the Apostle of Love, devoted to the poorest and most run down parts of Calcutta. This exceptional citizen of Skopje became a beloved and respected citizen of the world. Mother Teresa is often referred to as the saint of the gutters. She devoted her life to the innocent victims of violence - those dying in the streets, people suffering from leprosy, people afflicted with AIDS.
Mother Teresa believed that poverty was a gift from God. Not only did she sincerely believe in this, but she devotedly served this motto and her beloved God throughout her life. Never once did she wish to talk about her past and family, always emphasizing - I am my work - this is what counts!

The Bojaxhiu family

Nikola Bojaxhiu, the father of Gonxha, was a merchant according to certain sources, and a pharmaceutical assistant according to others. The information about her father's origins, as well as his profession, have never been fully confirmed, mainly because of the obscure and scant personal details given by Mother Teresa herself. At the same time, all those who were close to her always talk with great caution, coyly, and with the greatest consideration, aware of the possibility of giving false information about her childhood and the days she spent in Skopje.
Gonxha was the youngest child in the Bojaxhiu family. She had an elder sister, Aga, who was born in 1904, and an elder brother, Lazar, born in 1907. Their mother, Dranafila, was a housewife and an extremely religious woman, who was always eager to help everybody. The house of the Bojaxhiu family was open for everybody.
In a book by Lush Gjergji (Mother Teresa, Her Life, Her Work, 1990), which is dedicated to Mother Teresa, and which her family considers to be the closest to the truth, it has been noted that the Bojaxhiu family name, according to some stories, has three meanings: bojaxhi, meaning painting in Macedonian, or a person who paints rooms and houses; the second story claims that the Bojaxhiu family was a warring and fighting family and the third story proposes that the family name has its origins in its history as merchants who sold colourful goods.
According to the memories of Gonxha's brother Lazar, the Bojaxhiu family originates from Prizren (FR Yugoslavia). Lazar recalls the words of a 75-year-old gentleman, Kachulini, who claims that the Bojaxhiu was a big trading family sell-
ing goods as far away as in Egypt. According to him, some of the members of the family even remained there. Others went to Skadar. A smaller number of them remained in Prizren or went to live in different places, like Skopje, for instance.
Lazar points out as follows: - In our family, there always ruled the belief that we came from Prizren. At that time, Skopje was a famous commercial centre. Our grandmother Cecilia, my father's mother, as well as Lazar, my father's father, were merchants. Cecilia was a particularly successful merchant. They had quite a lot of money and immediately upon their arrival in Skopje, my father Nikola bought a house. Nikola, or as his friends used to call him Kole Bojaxhiu, continued the trading tradition of his family.
The son Lazar says the following about his father's work: "My father Nikola was a well known merchant. At the beginning, he worked with Dr. Shushkali, who loved him a lot, and who was one of the most distinguished people at the time. Probably because of this there are many reports in a number of newspapers and books that our father was a pharmacist, because he used to work with the doctor and sold pharmaceuticals. Nikola worked as a merchant and together with a friend, he was the owner of a civil engineering company in Skopje that was reasonably successful. Until he died, we had a peaceful and comfortable life. My father was very sociable. Later on, my father met an Italian merchant, Mr. Morteno. He most probably came from Venice and was very rich, and he was involved in selling different goods, that is different sorts of food stuff. They worked together and traveled a lot. I was particularly happy when my father came back from his journeys because he would then gather us all around and tell us stories, and he was a wonderful narrator. He always brought us a lot of things, but most of all we loved his stories. He was a talented story-teller who kept his young audience amused with enthralling tales of his travels."
However, the relatives in Skopje claim that Nikola was a pharmaceutical assistant and not a salesman. The family of the pharmaceutical assistant was neither rich nor poor, but the rule that governed there was that if a hungry person knocks on the door he must be given some food, and if this happens at night, the guest might also spend the night there.
Gonxha's mother and father were born in Skopje. Both had a big heart and they gave the poor food, clothes, money .... The family home had always been open to all, but invariably been a special welcome for the poor. An old lady of nearly 80 by the name of Markoni often visited the house. She used to drink coffee and brandy, she often shared dinner and supper with the Bojaxhiu family. Nikola always said: Welcome her warmly, with love I
Mother Teresa, recalling her youth and the moments that she spent with her parents, remembered the words of her mother: Daughter, never take a bite without sharing it with others!
Gonxha grew up in Skopje surrounded with love and she was able to see how love was unselfishly shared with others. When Nikola Bojaxhiu died in 1918, the
eldest daughter Aga was. 15 years old, the son Lazar 11, and Gonxha was only eight. The information concerning Nikola's death and the way in which he died are different. According to some, Nikola was also engaged in politics and took an active part in the fights against the Turks. He was also a member of the Skopje City Council as the only Catholic, a capable man and a gifted linguist who spoke not only Albanian and Serbo-Croat, but also Turkish, Italian and French. He often traveled to Europe, and once, upon his return from Belgrade where he had travelled with some fellow members of the City Council, he fell terribly ill.
The circumstances under which he died have not been ascertained, and it is believed by some that he was poisoned. Nikola's funeral was not only attended by his closest relatives and friends, but also by many distinguished citizens of Skopje of different nationalities and religions, as well as by many poor people whom he used to help. Nikola was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Skopje. After the disastours earthquake in 1963, his remnants were transferred to the common Catholic grave in Butel cemetery. When Mother Teresa visited Skopje for the first time after 52 years, she also visited the grave where her father was buried. She stood at the grave for a long time, as if she were caressing it, then made a cross and said: "Rest in peace!"
After Nikola's death, in 1918, mother Dranafila was left alone to take care of the children, to whom she was fully devoted. According to some written documents, mother Dranafila came from the Bernaj family from Prizren, but she was born in Skopje. Dranafila's father was a merchant and a landlord. The family arrived in Prizren from Novo Selo, a place near Djakovica (a place in Kosovo, FR Yugoslavia). Her family was large and wealthy.
Dranafila was a very hard working woman. In order to provide her children a secure and happy life after the death of her husband, she took to sewing and embroidery. Remembering his mother Lazar says: "She was a strong, unbreakable woman. She was gentle, kind, noble and sensitive. And she was very religious. We prayed together every night."
Dranafila (Drana 1889 - 1972) had a warm heart and she always cared about the poor, but she also had a special sense of responsibility and discipline. She used to say: "I will give you anything, just name it. But I also ask you to be good and serve as an example," Lazar claimed.
Mother Teresa's memories about her childhood and lifestyle in the centre of Skopje are as follows: "Many poor people from Skopje and its surroundings knew our house. Nobody was ever turned away empty handed. We had a guest for lunch every day. At first we used to ask: 'Who are they ?' My mother would say: 'Some are our relatives, our kinsmen.' When I grew older I understood that these people were poor, without any possession, and that my mother used to feed them. Regarding the good deeds that she used to do, Drana used to say: 'When you do good, do it quietly, as if you were throwing a stone into the sea.'"

Gonxha's childhood

Gonxha always remembered her childhood with joy. It is said that the name Gonxha was chosen by her father. Since her birth, Gonxha was always weak, fragile, sickly, and so everybody, especially her mother, was afraid
o When she was seven, she went to school, first to Sacred Heart Parish, and later to public school. There, she studied in Serbian. She had her first Communion in the Catholic Church in Skopje. She was hard working, cordial and willing to associate with the book. She was very talented, obedient, and everybody loved her - family, relatives and friends alike. She went to High School, her elder sister went to the School of Economics, and her brother Lazar was awarded a scholarship at the end of his secondary education to study in Austria. Only nine months later, he and a group of students from Albania went to Korcha where a French High School had been opened. From 1925 to 1939 Lazar lived in Albania, in Tirana. At that time, Gonxha was 14.
The young Gonxha took the vital decision to leave her birth town in 1928, and her mother Dranafila remained in Skopje with her eldest daughter. A few years later, in 1932, Aga left for Albania and moved to her brother's. They managed to talk their mother into moving with them, too. As she was attached to her children, Dranafila accepted Aga and Lazar's offer and she arrived in Tirana in 1934 with a couple of carpets and some embroidery. Aga, who studied economics in Macedonia, which was then part of Yugoslavia, worked as a Serbo-CroatianAlbanian interpreter, and later on as a Radio speaker in Tirana.
However, Lazar moved out again, this time to Italy in 1939, where he lived and where his family still lives, in Palermo, Sicily. Lazar married an Italian, a
baroness Maria Sanguine. They had one daughter and now their grandson is a grown-up.
Lazar, who, like Mother Teresa, never met his mother again, thinks about his mother with great sadness and says: "When I look at Teresa today, it is like I am looking at our beloved mother. She is so like her. When I last saw our mother in Tirana, she was very happy that we were together and that our sister Gonxha was a nun. She often wrote to us and she gave us strength with the prayers that she sent to us. My mother prayed always and everywhere, in Church, at home, and in the street."
At the time of the great events in the Balkans, when Lazar left Albania and went to Italy, nobody in the family could suppose that Dranafila would part from her children Gonxha and Lazar, whom she never had the opportunity to see again. The restrictive regime of the then Albanian authority did not allow the world famous Mother Teresa to visit her mother and sister.
The Albanian authorities did not concede to this and Mother Teresa's mother and sister died, without seeing each other again. Mother Drane died in 1972, followed by sister Aga two years later. They had never met again and this caused her greatest sorrow and pain.
Skopje 1910-1930

Gonxha's town, skopje, suffered many changes after she left it. On the day
, 1 she was born in 1910, the population of Skopje was about 37,000. Three " years later (after the Balkan Wars) the number dropped to 35,000, and in 1 .... 891 , at the end of the First World War, there were about 100,000 inhabitants in Skopje . Three years later, in 1921, when Gonxha was 11, the town had about 40,666 citizens, while a year before Gonxha had definitely left it, in 1926, when the official census took place, there lived 69,269 people in Skopje. These predse statistics have been systematized by Blagoja Ilievsld, a citizen of
Skopje, who worked for many years in the Cabinet of Skopje City Hall. His research shows that the largest part of the population in old Skopje was of Macedonian nationality, followed by Turks, Vllachians, Gypsies, and others, while a very small number of them were Arnauts (the name for Albaniansof Muslim religion at that time). Skopje then was one of the major tradeing centres in Macedonia. In the Sec
and Balkan War the allies from the First BalkanWar fought over the division of Macedonia. With the Bucharest Peace Treaty ( l Oth August, 1913) Macedonia was divided among Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia. The period between the two world wars was filled with constant endeavours to change the situation of Macedonia and annul the division of the country and its people. The events in the town affected young Gonxha as well. When she was only
four, Gonxha witnessed the big flood, when the entire central area of Skopje, their house and the Catholic Church were flooded. Later, during 1927, there was another event of extreme importance for the town and its dtizens - a theatre was opened in a beautiful building on the bank of the Vardar River, and some time later the House of Army Staff was also opened. Skopje was famous for the so-called Skopje "cordovan" - art objects made of
leather that were exported to Central Europe, Vienna, Leipzig, Kiev, Odessa, and the Near East. The handcraft in the town was not only flourishing, but the Chris-
tian artisans divided their craftwork into the manufacturing of slippers, shoes, caftans, jewelry, silver, coppersmith, saddles, the leather, coaches, pottery, and butchery.
The Muslims worked as barbers, tobacco sellers, coffee shop keepers, blacksmiths and saddlers, while a part of the population dealt with groceries, tailoring and other handcrafts. All this added to the specific cultural and ethnical splendor that produced a special spirit to which the citizens and those passing through were attracted. The town had two famous hotels - Evropa and Turati, where many bohemian nights were spent by the piano and politics was discussed. In 1922, During Gonxha's childhood, 300 people were paying for electricity in Skopje (it was provided from the power plant on the Pena River in Tetovo), and there were 100 street lights in the town as well.
French historian Victor BSrard had traveled in the Balkans on several occasions, and in 1897 he published a book - La Macedoifie. This was ten years preceding Mother Teresa's birth and at that time Skopje was not undergoing change. Berard was delighted with the town and this is how he describes it: "I have not seen any other town in the whole of Turkey with so much diversity in the population as in this Macedonian town just a few hours from Belgrade and Europe. The big Asian markets, the one in Bursa, Aleph and Damascus, compared to the one in Skopje, are nothing but pale and banal Turkish monuments." Describing the town as an interesting and important business and political centre, he wrote that on its streets "one can see Greeks in white man's skirts, Slavs in red suits, Macedonians in white coats and long trousers with black belts, Muslims in colourful rags, Gypsy women barely dressed in flimsy silk, old Turkish women in dresses, with a rose behind their ear and a scarf wrapped round their head like a turban, Jews, tall Albanians in red clothes, black Arabs. All races have their representatives and national clothes here. In the last 12 years the Muslim population have migrated from Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, and Bulgaria to Skopje."
He also emphasized that Skopje is the "public secret centre of intrigues, propaganda and rivalry. It is a Muslim, Serbian, Catholic, Greek, Bulgarian rally of all powers and religions, and the struggle is becoming more intense each day."
According to the same script, at the end of the last century over 15,000 Christian Orthodox people lived there in comparison to 6,000 Muslims. At that time, Skopje had two Orthodox churches: Sveti Spas (Saint Salvation) and Sveti Dimitrija (Saint Dimitrija).
A French journalist and writer Francis Lebrun traveled across Macedonia and in the text that he published in Bucharest, where he worked as a correspondent for the French newspaper "Le Matin," he wrote the following about Skopje in 1911: "We arrived in Skopje around midday. The train journey took us through the town and we could feel the charm of its position in a large valley with beautiful trees and green gardens. Vardar, a broad river with fast and clear waters as if
iit were a brook, flows between its banks planted with high poplars. Skopje is a joyous town with high minarets. In the old part of the town there is the old market with narrow, winding streets full of shops and workshops. In spite of the constant pressures, propaganda, and conquests from the neighbouring countries, in spite of the constant wars and conflicts and prosecution against the population in Skopje, its citizens love and experience it in a special way."
At the beginning of the century, Skopje was a quiet and peaceful town despite the turmoil taking place in its surroundings. "This is why everybody liked Skopje," an old citizen of Skopje Milica Pesheva recalls. "I remember there was an order in the style of living and we were always excited when a day of celebration was approaching because on such occasions we used to dress with special care and attend parties that were organized in the House of the Army Staff. I remember Skopje as an elegant town. Every Sunday there were matinee morning dances and everybody came perfectly dressed with a particular sign of distinction - with hats, gloves, and at that time men wore cylinders. In the evening there were musical bands in the town centre and the park, and carriages drove through. What I found especially characteristic of Skopje in my youth was its exclusively developed trade. A lot of merchants came there, and the shops were full of various goods."
- We, the young people would usually gather in the church building where we would sing and act. This is how we amused and entertained ourselves. At that time, as far as I can remember, and I lived in the centre of Skopje in the vicinity of the old Theatre building, which will not be only remembered for its extraordinary architecture but also for the atmosphere that it created, the majority of the population in the town was Macedonian. There were some Serbs, because the authority at that time was in the hands of the Serbs and we were taught in Serbian at school; there were Jews and Turks, and just a few Arnauts, as we used to call the Albanians. Rarely, very rarely, could you see women shrouded in cloth from head to toe, rarely, very rarely, could you hear somebody talking in Albanian," old Skopje citizen Milica Pesheva recalls.
In spite of the many joys that Skopje offered to its citizens at that time, it was the target of war devastation and destruction. According to some records, in the two Balkan Wars and the First World War about 30,000 houses were torn down, many people were killed and many crippled. All this affected young Gonxha's determination to devote herself completely to humanity and to achieve the name Mother Teresa - Motfier of Mercy.

Activities of the Caholic Church in Skopje

At the time the Bojaxhiu family lived in Skopje, the Catholic Church, lo cated in the centre of the town near young Gonxha s house, was very ac rive. At the meetings that the Church organized, the Catholic priests often read letters by missionaries from India. This was the time that young Gonxha had her first encounter with Mysticism and the problems of this country. According to the words of Sister Tomislava, one of the sisters in Mother Teresa's Missionaries Order in her House of Charity in Skopje, Mother Teresa used to say that she had decided to leave the town because she had heard the voice of God. She described it as the voice of thirst, not thirst for water, but for love and compassionate, friendly words. Later, this became the foundation of her teaching - in serving the poor, we are serving. Jesus Christ.
However, the Church did not only serve as a place for saying prayers and talking with priests, it was also a place where the young Catholics used to meet. The religion (Christianity) became of great importance to the young Gonxha not only at home, where the family used to sit together in the evening hours and pray, but also during the religious days when the young used to meet and socialize. Gonxha loved being in company and she often went on picnics outside Skopje with her friends, especially in the years following the end of the First World War.
She played the mandolina and sang in the Church Chorus called Jesus Heart. She was a soprano, while her sister Aga was a counter-alto. The two sisters participated in humanitarian concerts organized by young Catholics. Later on, a number of musical groups were formed in the Catholic Church such as Mokranjac, Gusli, Abrasevic.
Opposite the Catholic Church, there was the Seat of the Bishop and the house of the nuns, which greatly influenced the formation of young Gonxha, as well as her visits to the Sanctuary in Letica on Mount Skopska Crna Gora, where there was an annual meeting of the Orthodox, Catholics, Muslims, and Atheists. Mother Teresa used to visit Letica with her family and friends and she recalled "There, I heard God's voice for the first time."
Mother Teresa as citizen of Skopje, and as young Gonxha Bojaxhiu was faced with all the events that took place in Skopje, which was under the Turks at that time, as well as those that happened in her own family and school. She saw the formation of the first Yugoslavia and she learned how to communicate well with everybody, with those who spoke a different language, had a different culture and views, practised another religion, or differed in many other ways. However, these contradictions and differences taught her that only love can reduce the differences and that only love can give us the opportunity to see the positive in everything. Later on, when she arrived in Calcutta, Mother Teresa recalled Skopje where she washed the first wounds of the lonely woman together with her !mother Dranafila. So, family life was, and remained, her unfailing protection and inspiration. These were her secure and lasting roots that gave Mother Teresa the opportunity to develop into a phenomenon of the good.
Toni Josifovski, a close relative of Mother Teresa (Gonxha's father Nikola was Toni's uncle), on recalling his youth and friendship with Gonxha, told us: "Gonxha was an energetic and joyful girl. We socialized a lot and we lived as one family. Especially after Nikola had died and Dranafila remained alone with the children, we were all together. I remember once in the Catholic Church, where we young people used to meet, we were waiting in line to make confession and Gonxha suddenly pushed in front of me and exclaimed that she was first in line! This was her, lively, temperamental and energetic. I was very young, but I recall her as a girl, when her brother the adventurer Lazar had left Skopje and when she, her sister Aga, and their mother Drana were left on their own. Our families had dinners together on a regular basis, as well as on many other occasions, and Gonxha and my elder brother Lorenc Antoni were the closest because they were of the same age."
Mother Teresa was always very engaged in the church community. She did not only sing in the Chorus, but she also played in the church and town theatres, she danced, recited, played the mandolin, wrote poetry. Lorenc Antonie, Toni Josifovski's brother, and the same age as Gonxha, recalled that she had a beauti-
ful voice. "While I studied at the High School, Gonxha and her sister sang my first song - On the Bank of the Lake, from the text of Hila Mosity. This took place at the humanitarian Academy on 25 March 1928, when money for the poor was collected. We used to organize such performances very often, almost every month. Gonxha was always the first to arrive at the rehearsals. She was very punctual and always in a good mood. I taught her to play the mandolin.She learned it very quickly and very well. She gave regular performances in the Catholic Youth Society. She recited, sang, acted in performances, and so on. She was the centre around which all the others gathered, mostly the girls, and she had a very good sense of organization. Together with Father Jambrekovic, she was our inspirer and organizer."
"It simply looked as if she had a different heart from ours. She could not offend or argue. On the contrary, if any help was needed - she was there. She would gather us round to teach us school subjects. She had a huge talent for singing. All those who could hear her voice used to tell my uncle: Koljo, you have a golden child. When she decided to leave her parents' home, I remember that my mother came home very excited. 'Gonxha,' she said, 'is going to Ireland, she is leaving us.' It was the end of September. All the relatives came to say good bye to her at the railway station. We were saying farewell and we knew that we were losing her. She was simply sitting, smiling, modest, simple, bidding us good bye and walking away from us," Lorenc Antoni, the now deceased cousin of Mother Teresa and brother of Toni Josifovsld's, recalled nearly two decades ago. The brothers Toni and Lorenc had the same mother and father but different family names because of the historical circumstances and the frequent re-naming of the citizens of Macedonia. The mixed marriages are, however, characteristic of Mother Teresa's relatives.

The beautiful voice ov Gonxha

A great humanist, cheerful, smiling, sociable - this is what all who knew her say about her, emphasizing that she was perfect. A close friend and relative of hers in Skopje told us the following on the news of her death on 5
September 1997: "I recall Mother Teresa as a good companion with whom I shared so many things a long time ago, at the time when there was the Association of Girls in the framework of the Catholic Church".
- "We were always together in theatre performances, as well as in musicals, and she sang beautifully - always solo. She was very sociable and willing to help her friends. She was particularly interested in their learning. Whenever a friend was sick, she would go to her place and bring her books, explaining what they had learned at school that day. At the same time, she was very religious, she used to go to Church every day and she attended the church ceremonies every Sunday. She used to say 'just pray, pray for everyone, bring the people closer, have a lot of love for each other. At the age of 18, Gonxe Bojaxiu decided to leave her birthplace," her relative Pina Markovska recalls (their grandparents were brother and sister) and adds that she remembers "the moment Gonxha announced her decision with the following words: 'I have made up my mind: either this, or nothing else.'" According to some records of her mother Dranafila, it was not a very big surprise when she heard the words of her daughter, and yet, at first she could not easily accept the decision. She went into one room and kept her there for the whole day, and when she re-appeared, she told her daughter: 'Put your hands into His - into His hands - and pass the whole road with Him!'
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- Path to India
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- On her path to devotion - to serve the poorest of the poor and to give love to those who needed love - Gonxha left Skopje and traveled to Ireland, after which she arrived in Calcutta, the largest Capital of the British Empire after London at that time. She left Skopje and traveled to Zagreb on 26 September, and she traveled by train together with her mother Drana and sister Aga.
- A year after Gonxha had left for Zagreb and to India, another young girl from Skopje decided to become a nun. It was Ana Lakacu, a good friend of Gonxha's, two years younger than her and a good companion of hers. Her family recalls that the Catholic Church, which was very active at that time, had a great influence on her. The Church used to gather together the best educated and most talented ones. "At that time Skopje was an interesting mixture of different cultures, and the Albanian Catholics often got married to people of Orthodox religion, while they never, however, did so with Muslims," Ana's cousin Zlatica claims. She says with great sadness that Ana Lacuku remained in the Monastery in Zagreb, and according to her story, Gonxha was a great friend, cheerful and hardworking, as well as a'very religious and persistent.
- Ana Lacuku became sister Tina, and she spent the rest of her life as a nun in Zagreb, Rijeka, Zemun, and Slavonski Brod.
- Cousin Toni recalls the days the young Gonxha started her journey to India. "Gonxha first traveled to Ireland and then to India. As time passed, the people's respect for her started to grow. They wondered how she could take care of and work with the lepers and not get sick herself. This is how she gradually won the confidence of the people, as well as of the authorities in India."
- Her relatives in Skopje explained that the determination to devote her life to God and to work on his behalf - was also influenced by Janez Gnidovec, a charismatic personality who was the Bishop in Skopje Catholic Church from 1924 to 1939, as well as by Father Franjo Jambrekovic, a priest in Sacred Heart Church in 1925. Father Jambrekovic founded the Church library for the young and orga-
- nized a humanitarian section called the Society of Blessed Saint Mary.
- Gonxha left for India on 1 September 1928, and on 9 September Gonxha wrote: "I am leaving my home, my fatherland and relatives with a heart full of sadness. I am going to the remote and suffering Bengal."
- A few days before leaving for Zagreb, at the beginning of her journey, on 25 September, a farewell concert was held in her honour in Skopje. The whole of Skopje came to say good bye, everybody was crying, except her. She was saying -do not cry, I am departing upon God's call, I am going there to help and do good deeds. Gonxha's young colleague from Slovenia, Batika Kajnch, also arrived in Zagreb and they together began their mission. Gonxha and Batika traveled through Austria, Switzerland, France, England, up to Ireland in Dublin.
- Gonxha arrived in Calcutta on 6 January 1929, when she was not yet 19, and she stayed there until the end of her life laboriously building the image of the famous Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
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- Gonxha in Calcutta
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- There is so much beauty and joy in the gutters, legendary Mother Teresa said on one occasion while describing her devotion to work with the poor est of the poor, with the sick, the abandoned and the forsaken.
- Mother Teresa was particularly fond of children, she enjoyed working with them and there was not a single day without a number of abandoned and desperate children in the houses of the Missionaries of Charity. The missioner from Skopje, who continued her life in the remote, exotic, and terribly poor Bengal, unselfishly gave herself to humanitarian work which she never repented. On the contrary, it made her happy when she managed to produce a smile on the faces of the most wretched.
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-Gonxha becomes Sister Teresa
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- The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as of many other awards and recognitions, said that her most precious prize was the moment she was giving help to somebody. Gonxha Bojaxhiu became a member of the Loreto order in 1928, which organized the missionary schools in India. On 24 May 1931 she made her second vital decision and changed her name into Sister Teresa.
- She chose this name in the honour of Saint Teresa from Aville, a Spanish nun in the 16-th century. Teresa from Aville belonged to the order of the so-called bare-footed Carmelites. Carmelites are Roman Catholic religious orders originating from the ascets on the Carmel hill in Palestine.
- Teresa from Aville or Teresa from Jesus (1515-1582), a Spanish writer, a nun born in Aville, reformed the Carmelites order. Her ascetic and mystical works are precious monuments of the Spanish language. She was canonized in 1622, and in 1970 the Catholic Church proclaimed her as a teacher of the church - doctor ecclesiae.
- However, in the one of the latest book on Mother Teresa published in the United States by the British author Anne Sebba (1997), as well as, in the book of Indian author Navin Chawla (1993), it is written that Gonxha did not take the name Teresa after the Spanish Teresa from Aville, but after St.ThOr'ese of Lisieux, a French nun from the order of the Carmelites, who died in 1897 of tuberculosis at the age of 24, who lived a simple life devoted to prayers and missionary work, and who was canonized in 1927.
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- Foundation of missionaries of charity
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- From 1929 to 1948 Gonxha taught geography in Saint Mary High School in Calcutta. For a few years she was the Principal of this school, and she was also responsible for the daughters of Saint Ana, an Indian religious order close to the sisters of Loreto.
- On 10 September 1946, Mother Teresa received the permission of the authorities to live by herself and she started working in the suburbs in Calcutta. She managed this with approval from Rome. In 1948 Pope Pie 12th gave her permission to live as an independent nun, and at the same time she became a citizen of India following a three-month study period in the LIS Medical Missionary School in the Indian town of Panta.
- Her return to Calcutta marked the beginning of the establishment of the Missionaries of ChaNty. It started its humanitarian activities on 7 October 1950 in Calcutta, which then spread throughout the world. The big mission begins with the sacred prayer Of the 12 sisters. The characteristic of the order is the simple white sari with blue borders and a cross on the left shoulder.
- The engagement of the young citizen of Skopje, who devoted her whole life to others, began with this simple, cordial, unselfish and inexhaustible energy. Mother Teresa expresses in a short sentence what she was engaged in throughout decades - We cannot make big things. Only little ones, but with a lot of love.
- In 1928 she became a novitiate in Loreto Order, which ran mission schools in India. In 1929 she began to teach geography at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta and in 1973 she took final vows as a nun. After studying nursing, Mother Teresa moved into the slums. Municipal authorities, upon her petition, gave her the pilgrim hostel near sacred Kale's temple where she founded her order in 1948. She adopted Indian citizenship, and her Indian nuns all donned the sari as their habit, simple one with blue lines and with a cross on the left shoulder. In 1950 she officially founded the order Missionaries of Charity receiving canonical sanction from the Pope Pious XII, and in 1965 it became a pontifical congregation (subject only to the Pope).
- Malcolm Muggeridge, a journalist, in his book (Something Beautiful for God,1971) published an interview with Mother Teresa where she spoke about her life and decision to devote it to the poorest of the poor. "In Skopje, I lived at home with my parents. We children used to go to a non-Catholic school but we also had very good priests who were helping the boys and girls to follow their vocation according to the call of God. It was then that I first had a vocation to the poor." Mother Teresa in the interview pointed out: "I wanted to go out and give the life of Christ to the people in the missionary countries." Mother Teresa recalled: "At the beginning, between twelve and eighteen, I didn't want to become a nun. We were a very happy family. But, when I was eighteen, I decided to leave my home and become a nun, and since then, I have never doubted even for a second that I did the right thing. It was the will of God. It was his choice. In 1946 I was going to Darjeeling to make my retreat. It was on that train I heard the call to give up everything and follow him into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor."
- Mother Teresa described the work with the leper's with the following words: "Leprosy is not a punishment, it can be a very beautiful gift of God if we make good use of it. Through it, we can learn to love the unloved, the unwanted, not only just to give them things but to make them feel that they, too, are useful, that they, too, can do something because they feel they are loved and wanted, that they can share the task of loving. We have care of thousands of leprosy patients and altogether between India, Africa and the Middle East, we take care of 158,000 leprosy patients."
- In the late 1970s the Mission of Charity counted over 1,000 nuns who operated 60 centres in Calcutta and more than 200 worldwide centres, including foundations in Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Jordan, Venezuela, Great Britain, Australia and her birthplace Skopje, Macedonia.
- By 1990, 456 centres were established in more than one hundred countries. During that year, 500,000 families were fed, 20,000 slum children were taught in 124 schools, 90,000 leprosy patients were treated and 17,048 "shut-ins" were visited in their home. Six AIDS shelters admitted 661 patients, of whom eightyeight died during the year.
- Mother Teresa said: "When I started to work, I recall that I lifted a woman suffering from leprosy from the street and that was the beginning of the opening of the house of love in which the people would be able to die in care. We picked up about 36,000 people only from the streets of Calcutta, about 16,000 died in care; and we were happy to enable these people to die peacefully. The worst sickness is not leprosy or AIDS. The worst sickness is when people are lonely, when they have forgotten the meaning of happiness, mutual love, simple touch of love. People who have such a life are rejected and lonely, they have the worst sickness in the world."
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- In Skopje again in 1970
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- t At the beginning of May 1970, Mother Teresa arrived in Skopje for the first time since she had left for India 42 years before. In former Yugoslavia, she first landed at Belgrade Airport on 8 May, from where she traveled to
- Prizren and then Skopje. During her short stay in her birthplace she visited Bishop Joaldm Herbut and the Centre of the Red Cross in Macedonia.
- Mother Teresa made another visit to Skopje on 27 March 1978. The news about her arrival was met with great interest because she was already famous in the world. Her second arrival in Skopje arose enormous excitement and many believers and citizens came to see her. At the mass that was held in her honour in the Catholic Church, the welcoming speech was delivered by Bishop Josef Herbut. He said: "I need not introduce Mother Teresa to you. I will only say that she was born in Skopje in 1910, to an Albanian Catholic family, and that she often prayed to God here, in front of the statue of Jesus Heart. While living and praying here, she heard the voice of God - Get up and leave your country, your fatherland and home, your predecessors, go to a foreign country that I will indicate to you.
- Praiseworthy Mother, I am very pleased and happy to be able to greet you here in this Church, which is poor but dear to your heart, together with all the believers who have gathered here from the entire Parish, together with representatives of other religions and the citizens of Skopje!"
- During her visit to Skopje, which lasted several days, Mother Teresa gave an interview for Skopje Television in which, among other things, she spoke about the beginnings of her work. - "I started by picking up people who were dying on the
- streets. Now, we have about 1,450 sisters and a few fathers who are working for the poor. From Yugoslavia (she is referring to former Yugoslavia) there are only five. I believe that others will join as well. There are 35 nationalities in our congregation."
- Asked which sickness she believed to be the worst considering that she was in constant contact with the sick, Mother Teresa answered: "The worst illness of all is not leprosy, but loneliness, when somebody is forsaken by everything. The people who do not know of joy, of human love, and human touch. Their number is constantly growing."
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- Mother Teresa on Macedonian radio - radio Skopje
- - In her short interview for Macedonian Radio - Radio Skopje, Mother Teresa stated: "I am happy that I have been able to come here again. Everything is different now. Nothing has remained of what used to be, nothing reminds me of the picture I have in my memory. I do not recognize anything, and yet everything is so familiar to me. Even the air."
- Regarding her work and achievements, she said: "I don't know. I have not achieved all this by myself. I have many sisters, many people who are helping, we call them associates. However, we have received from the poor much more than they have from us."
- As for the Nobel Peace Prize, she said: "I was awarded this prize on behalf of the poor. If I had not been working for them and with them, I would not have received the Nobel Prize. By giving me this prize, they showed that the work of love is the work of peace."
- In recalling the Skopje of before, while she was taking a walk in the centre of the town, at the place where her house used to be, Mother Teresa said: "This is my little street. This is the place where I used to play, and the Church of Jesus Heart was here. I used to visit it several times a day. I used to pray and feel as good as only a youthful person can, beautiful and unforgettable. My Skopje. My birthplace. Times... Years... I am right here where I was born. Do not pay any attention to me, I am talking to myself and to God who created me here. Here... And, He has brought me back to Skopje again. Well, after all, I am a citizen of Skopje.
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- The last visit to Skopje
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- On 19 September 1986, Mother Teresa visited Skopje once again. She had some meetings in the Bishopric and she signed an agreement on purchas ing a house in Skopje to be used by her order. She had the total support of Mayor Jugoslav Todorovski and of the vice president of the City Hall, Predrag Penusliski, to settle her sisters in a new building where her mission is still protected. Before her departure, she said her last prayer in the new Catholic Church in front of Jesus Heart Statue, which was moved there from the old church.

Mother Teresa - the saint

When a curious citizen of Calcutta hears the name of the town of Skopje, his reaction is the same, regardless of his social or political affiliation -it is with amazement, delight, and a smile that he shouts out - Skopje, this is a sacred place!
The synonym for sacred is the worship for Mother Teresa who fully devoted herself to the poverty of Calcutta, for which she was awarded the title of "the most humane woman of the century."
"You must see for yourself what it means to be hungry," Mother'Teresa used to say to us, explains Dr. Orven Pinto who was her closest friend for 30 years. Near the very central area of Calcutta, in the vicinity of the houses of the mercy he told us that he last saw her three weeks before she died, that she was very sad and that she told him the following: "I can see that the poor are becoming even poorer, the rich richer, and the borders between the states in the world have never been stronger and more closed."
- During my short visit to Calcutta in the days of the funeral ceremony I met a journalist, Sankaralal Bhattacharjee from the Indian weekly "Sandana", who told me that he knew Mother Teresa very well, that he had met her many times and that he had written about her work. We were sitting in his small office when he smiled and said: "It is a great memory for those of us who saw the phenomenon of Mother Teresa growing. Whenever I asked her about her past, she would continuously say - why don't you look around, won't see my job, won't see my work, why do you want to ask about me?
- She continuously refused to talk about herself. During our conversation I would say - of course I know your work, it is because I used to live in the same area when I was young. I was curious about her past. She spoke fluent Bengali, and if you spoke to her in English, she would answer in Bengali, and when I asked her - do you still remember your mother tongue, Albanian, she said - no, I have forgotten it, I have forgotten it. I think she really liked me and we even had good friendly relations but she never ever said anything about her past," told me Bhattachharjee.
Mother Teresa's constant insistence on the insignificance of her personal life meant that she spoke little about early years. When she did so it was to stress that hers had been a childhood rendred harmonious by small, everday things and the support od a loving family. "Mine was a happy family. I had one brother and one sister, but I do not like to talk about it. It is not important now. The important thing is to follow God's way, the way he leads us to something beautiful for him."
Calcutta is a strange world. In the house where Mother Teresa lived and worked there are the lower rooms that you enter from the small squared courtyard. In a large, simple room there is a simple white marble plate on her grave. There is a large number of people among whom a lot of children who are quietly waiting to pay their respects to Mother of Calcutta.
- Sisters Gertruda and Monika, who spent their whole lives near Mother Teresa, guided me extremely kindly and gently through the long line of people to help me put on her grave the candle that I had brought from Skopje on behalf of her cousin Pina. Sister Gertruda was quite upset when she said: I was with Mother Teresa from 1946 up to the last day of her life. She spoke Croatian-Serbian. She had forgotten the Albanian language a long time ago. Nobody ever wrote to her in Albanian. When she received the last letter from her mother, and I was in Rome with her, she gave the letter to her brother to read it for her because she did not understand it. Here in Calcutta a lot of priests from Croatia used to come and she constantly spoke with them, so she used to speak good Serbo-Croatian, but she had forgotten Albanian. The only thing that she never forgot in Albanian was the five-word prayer for repentance.
- The many decades of arduous work and only four hours sleep a day produced many wrinkles on her skin, her back was curved, and her health was affected. Back in 1976 she had a small stroke, and in 1983 she had a serious heart attack. Six years later she went on living with a pace-maker, and her noble heart, defeated by malaria and another heart attack, stopped beating on 5 September 1997.
- Mother Teresa, for millions of Catholics and for others as well, was already a saint who was devoted to the gutters, living as pious, chaste, ascetic, prayerful, poor, full of love for everyone. She said once: "We cannot make big things, only small, but with great love." Her life was modest, but the world's farewell and
- funeral in Calcutta was grandiose. Among the distinguished personalities from the whole world there was a Macedonian delegation, with the Minister in the Government Vlado Naumovski, Skopje Mayor Risto Penov, and Slave Nikolovski-Katin, Vice-president of the Commission for Relations with Religious Communities of the Republic of Macedonia.
In Calcutta I paid several visits to the places in which she used to live and work. The day when we arrived from Skopje there was agitated interest, surprise, and commentary among her closest sisters - what a pity Mother Teresa is not alive, she would have been very happy, Sister Monica emphasized with a gentle and silent voice, pointing out that Mother Teresa spoke only one language - the language of love for the poor. She said that the greatest suffering of all is loneliness, the feeling of being rejected, and lack of love. The sisters spoke of her with great love. "She was a very simple person."
I had a very brief meeting with her successor, sister Narmala, who told me that "Mother Teresa often spoke about Skopje and the Catholic Church Jesus Heart."
- During her visit to Skopje from 10 to 13 October 1997, a month after the grand funeral of Mother Teresa had taken place in Calcutta, sister Narmala met Skopje Mayor Risto Penov and she then repeated that Mother Teresa often spoke about Skopje. "I came here to see the place where she was born. Last year, when she was very, very sick, she spoke about the mother house. For us, that is in Calcutta, and there are three such houses. But Mother Teresa said - Pop Kochina LIlica, all the time she repeated that, and then we realized that she was talking about her mother's house. Mother said - Let's go there. I replied - Mother, after the Chapter of our international meeting, after that finishes, we will go. But, unfortunately, after that Mother was not able to come, and that's one of the reasons that I have come now, " Sister Nirmala said and she added: "We are very grateful to the people of Skopje, because that is our Mother's birthplace. A very special, holy place for us I "
Lack of love or at least the feeling that this is so was strongly felt by Diana, Princess of Wales, whose life was brdught to a tragic and abrupt end a week before the sick heart of Mother Teresa stopped beating. The death of the young Princess shook the world and it was with great sadness that articles about her beauty, glory, tenderness and humanity were written, and the fact that she said good bye so early made her immortal.
- The death of Mother Teresa represents for the world a parting from a woman who was a saint for many while she was alive, while for others, she has become a saint after her passing away I

Mother Teresa

"The poor do not need our sympathy and our pity. The poor need our love and compassion. They give us much more than we give them.. During a terrible time when millions of refugees fled to India, we asked for hell5 and many volunteers came and spent some months with us, just loving, serving, giving tender love and care to our people. On their departure, they said they had received much more than they had given.
- In Calcutta, some time ago, we went out at night and picked up four or five people from the street and took them to our Home for the Dying. One of them was in a very bad condition and I wanted to take care of her myself. I did for her all that my love could do. When I put her into bed, she took hold my hand and there was such a wonderful smile on her face. She said one word: "Thank you" and she died. She gave me much more than I had given her. She gave me her greatful heart and I thought: what would I have done in her place ? My answer was: I would have tried to draw some attention to myself, I would have said: I am hungry or I am cold or I am dying. But she, she was so great, she was so beautiful in her giving.
- The poor are great people."

In the canter plaza of Skopje there is a small rectangular marking 5 x 3 m with a metal plate saying- Here was the house where Mother Teresa was born.You can see a little Gipsy boy there, maybe 7 years old, dirty and poor, playing a tarabuca, (a small drum) singing all day long.I can't understand what is singing, but it sounds like a cry, a cry for Mother Teresa...

By Jasmina Mironski - Mother Teresa, citizen of Skopje, citizen of the world.

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