Perhaps the most famous woman of the twentieth century is a small, frail-looking nun by the name of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who became much better known to the world simply as Mother Teresa.
Born in 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia, after leaving for Ireland in 1928 to learn English, she was eventually sent as a missionary to India where she was to teach at the Loreto convent school in Calcutta.
It was soon after the end of the Second World War she felt a calling from God to work with the poorest of India's half a million citizens.
Establishing the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with just 13 members, eventually it grew to a staff of 4,000 nuns who would run dozens of orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centers worldwide.
Her establishment of a hospice for dying destitutes in 1979 eventually won her a Nobel Peace Prize and made her not only a household name, but made the name Mother Teresa synonymous with compassion and charity.
