Mother Teresa’s greatest accomplishment is probably the vast number of people she’s helped over the span of her life time, and even after with the help of the Order of Missionaries of Charity which she founded. The Missionaries of Charity established the first house for the poor in 1965. Today they have established 600 missions, schools and homes in 120 nations worldwide with thousands of nuns working for them.

            Mother Teresa has received numerous awards for her work. She got her first award in 1962, but that was only one of the many she got later on. Mother Teresa was awarded the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize for International Understanding bye Pope Paul VI in 1971, the Nobel Peace Prize I 1979, Bharat Ratna in 1980 and a Philippines-based Ramon Magsaysay award for International Understanding. A movie was even filmed in 1997 called Mother Teresa. She accepted all these awards on behalf of the poor, and donated all the prize money, saying that rewards were only important if they helped her work for the helpless. It’s no wonder that she received so many awards.

            Personally, I think that her whole life was full of accomplishments. In 1952 Mother Teresa founded her first home for the dying in India. Later she founded more homes like the Kalighat Home for the Dying, for all religions, the home for lepers in Shanti Nagar and in 1955 the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan for the homeless and orphan children. What I find extremely impressive is that she went to what was known as the poorest country in the world, set up a shelter for homeless, sick and dying, and by the end of one day she had picked up 42 000 contagious diseased people. Mother Teresa was extremely successful in her job.

            In 2003, six years after Mother Teresa’s death, she began the passage to sainthood with her beautification (a first step towards canonization; the act that proclaims a person’s sainthood). Mother Teresa has inspired millions with her unrelenting devotion, and she will always be remembered.