Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below:
Mother Teresa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was a
special kind of person. Special in the sense of someone who wholly identified
herself with the suffering of the poor, the very. poorest of the poor.
She was the founder of the religious order called the
Missionaries of Charity. The Missionaries have their houses in Calcutta and: in
other Indian towns; also in Australia, Sri Lanka, Jordan and Tanzania. They are
Springing up all the time the world over.
Mother Teresa is the inspiration and driving force
behind the work the Missionaries do. She was born in Skopje in Yogoslavia,
where she spent her early years. At the age of twelve, when she was still a
school girl, she felt she had a vocation to the poor. She did not, however,
decide to become a nun until she was eighteen. It was not an easy decision for
her to make. Her home had been an exceptionally happy one and she did not want to
leave that. However, her vocation to the poor won in the end and she left home
to become a Roman Catholic nun.
At the time some missionaries had gone' to India. They
told her of the good work the Loreto nuns were doing in Calcutta and other
places. She offered to join them and was sent to India in 1929, to teach at the
Loreto Convent School in Calcutta. It was while she was teaching at the Loreto
Convent School ‘that the second change in Mother Teresa’s life took place. She
had occasion to go into some of the poorest streets of Calcutta and suddenly
realized that she belonged there, not in her Loreto Convent with its pleasant
garden, eager schoolgirls and rewarding work. She came to look upon her life as
a teacher as unduly easy in contrast with the lives of the very poor in
Calcutta.
She applied for permission to leave the Convent. When
finally ‘it came, she stepped out of the convent with a few rupees in her
pocket, made her way to the poorest quarter of the city, found a lodging there,
gathered a few orphan children, and began her work.
Questions:
- (a) Why is Mother Terasa referred to as special?
- (b) Name the organisation which Mother Terasa founded.
- (c) Give an account of the early life of Mother Terasa.
- (d) Why did she become a nun?
- (e) Why did she leave Loreto convent school?
- (f) Find words in the passage which means:
a number of community of women:
living apart under religious vows.
