Mother Teresa: Some unknown facts about the world's most famous nun

• Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Macedonia, Mother Teresa was fascinated with missionary life from an early age. She left home at 18 to join Sisters of Loreto in Dublin and later proceeded to India. She never saw her family again in her entire life.
• Before the calling to serve the poorest of poor, Mother Teresa used to teach history and geography in Calcutta at St. Mary's high school, a school for the daughters of wealthy residents of the city.
• Besides the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa also founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers in 1963, the contemplative branch of the Sisters in 1976 , the Contemplative Brothers in in 1979 , and the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984.
• In 1979, on being bestowed with the Nobel Prize, Mother Teresa refused the traditional Nobel honor banquet, requesting that the $1,92,000 funds be given to help the poor of India.
• In view of her massive worldwide popularity, Mother Teresa's canonisation is being completed in unusually quick time. The late pope John Paul II had fast-tracked her beatification (the step before sainthood).
• Mother Teresa also had to face criticism, the most scathing being in Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, in which she is accused of glorifying poverty for her own ends.