DATE: Sunday, September 14, 1997            TAG: 9709140190

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A10  EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:  182 lines

MOTHER TERESA: A LIFETIME OF GIVING

EARLY LIFE:

Aug. 27, 1910: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu is born in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, the youngest of three children. She grows up in a family with a penchant for philanthropy. Her father, Kole Bojaxhiu, is a prosperous Yugoslavian merchant who gives generously to the poor. Her mother, Drana Bojaxhiu, is a devout woman who teaches her children that giving to the poor is giving to God.

But 8-year-old Agnes experiences the fickleness of wealth when her father dies and the family's assets disintegrate. Her mother takes in sewing and seeks solace in benevolent works. The young Agnes receives an apprenticeship for her later career as she accompanies her mother to the homes of the poor - cleaning houses, caring for the sick and sharing food.

A MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING:

Her early life is a practical foundation of hard work and economics that Mother Teresa will use in later years.

She sets her sights on missionary work after hearing stories from missionaries who pass through Skopje.

1928: Becomes a novitiate in Loretto order, which runs mission schools in India. She takes the name Sister Teresa, after St. Teresa of Lisieux, the patroness of missionaries.

At age 18, she travels to a convent in Dublin, Ireland, to learn English. Four months later, she is in India learning Bengali. In 1929, she becomes a geography teacher at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta and takes her final vows at age 27.

1937: Sister Teresa takes her final vows as a nun.

CALLED BY JESUS:

At age 36, she receives what she terms a ``call within a call'' to devote her life to the poor.

``I felt that God wanted from me something more. He wanted me to be poor with the poor,'' she writes in her book ``My Life for the Poor.''

1946: While riding a train to the Indian mountain town of Darjeeling to recover from suspected tuberculosis, she receives a calling from Jesus ``to serve him among the poorest of the poor.''

She asks the archbishop of Calcutta for permission to work outside the convent and help the poor by living among them. It is an uncommon request that is treated cautiously. The archbishop offers her a post with a group of Bengali nuns. But Mother Teresa wants to live among the poor and not return to the shelter of the cloister walls each evening. She turns down the offer.

Her request ends up at the Vatican and, 18 months after receiving her ``call,'' she is given permission to leave the convent, though she is still bound by her vows.

In 1947, with three months of accelerated medical training and five rupees (about $1) from the archbishop, Mother Teresa begins doing work similar to that she did with her mother in Skopje: She looks after the sick, cleans houses and washes laundry. She brings the dying back to her mission where they may die with dignity rather than on Calcutta's fetid streets.

Eventually, she finds a hut and begins a school.

1950: Mother Teresa founds the order of Missionaries of Charity.

Two years after she leaves the convent, Mother Teresa's order becomes an official religious order with its own constitution recognized by the Vatican.

Donations and volunteers, many of them her ex-students, soon follow. A wealthy Calcutta Catholic donates a three-story house. Pharmacists donate medicines, and more and more of the wealthy give time and money.

1952: Opens Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a home for the dying. Her first orphanage opens in 1953.

SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL FOR GOD:

Mother Teresa sets a pace unmatched in recent history for devotion to the poor. Over almost half a century, she builds a missionary empire that spreads through more than 100 countries.

``Let us do something beautiful for God'' becomes her motto.

Under Mother Teresa's direction, life is austere for the Missionaries of Charity. As well as the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, nuns joining the mission are required to take a fourth vow of ``whole-hearted free service to the poorest of the poor.''

Modern conveniences are considered luxuries, and Mother Teresa never hesitates in rejecting donations that could make her sisters' lives more comfortable.

She turns down fans for the Calcutta mission, saying, ``I do not want them to have fans. The poor whom they are to serve do not have fans.''

At buildings donated by churches in the United States, she insists that washing machines be removed, heating turned down and Formica tables replaced with wood.

She asks nothing of the members of her order that she is unwilling to bear herself.

In the 1950s, she sells a limousine given to her by Pope Paul VI and opens a leper colony.

After winning the Nobel Prize, she turns down the banquet in her honor and asked that the estimated $6,000 cost be given to the poor. And at age 74, she cancels cataract surgery, saying the money should be spent on charity.

THE WORLD TAKES NOTICE:

1962: Mother Teresa wins her first prize for humanitarian work: the Padma Shri award for ``distinguished service.''

She attracts the world's attention in 1969 when British writer Malcolm Muggeridge makes a documentary of her work, ``Something Beautiful for God.'' After that, her Calcutta mission is a regular stop for royalty, political leaders and celebrities who want to be seen with her.

She travels the world and opens almost all her missions personally.

Even staunchly atheistic countries such as Cuba and Albania welcome her.

Mother Teresa frequently censures the West for what she calls its ``spiritual poverty'' and challenges Westerners to fulfill their moral obligations: ``Their first duty is to work among their own people, bring together separated couples and build good homes where the children may receive their parents' love.''

Despite her good works, her saintly image takes some hits over the years. She draws criticism from social reformers who accuse her of using a Band-Aid approach to poverty and not addressing its political and economic causes.

She is, however, unapologetic about her work and defends herself by saying, ``I am called upon to help the individual, to love each poor person, not to deal with institutions.''

Criticism simmers when she trades accolades with the ruling Duvalier family during a trip to Haiti in 1980. During the family's 28-year dictatorship, Francois Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, squander the poverty-plagued nation's millions.

During a 1988 visit to South Africa, she refuses to criticize the racist laws of the apartheid government. Instead, she insists her only purpose is to care for the poor.

She is a vociferous opponent of abortion and what she calls ``unnatural birth control.'' During her Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1979, she said, ``To me, the nations with legalized abortion are the poorest nations.''

In 1992, she writes to the U.S. judge presiding over the trial of Charles Keating, who had donated $1.25 million to her order, telling him that the accused swindler ``has always been kind and generous to God's poor.''

She brushes aside accusations of impropriety.

``No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work,'' she says.

QUESTIONS OF SAINTHOOD:

Throughout the last decades of life, she is frequently trailed by questions of sainthood. In 1975, Time magazine makes the ``canonization'' semiofficial when it featured her photo on the cover with the caption ``Living Saints - Messengers of Hope for our Time.''

Her stoic response never wavers. ``Let me die first,'' she says.

Decades of caring for the poor and sick do not dull Mother Teresa's sense of humor.

``The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of heaven,'' she tells Prince Michael of Greece. ``And St. Peter said, `Go back to Earth - there are no slums up here.' ''

1979: Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1982: She persuades the Israelis and Palestinians to stop shooting long enough to rescue 37 retarded children from a hospital in besieged Beirut.

1985: Awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award.

On Nov. 16, 1996, she receives honorary U.S. citizenship.

A DECLINE IN HEALTH:

Her health has long been fragile. She suffers a heart attack in 1983 during a meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome.

In 1989, she has a second, stronger heart attack and receives a pacemaker.

In 1993, she is afflicted with malaria.

In 1990, she announces her intention to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity. A conclave of sisters is called to choose a successor. In a secret ballot, Mother Teresa is re-elected with only one dissenting vote - her own - and withdraws her request to step down.

1991: She suffers pneumonia in Tijuana, Mexico, which leads to congestive heart failure. She is hospitalized in La Jolla, Calif.

In May 1993, she breaks three ribs in a fall in Rome. She is hospitalized for malaria in August in New Delhi. In September in Calcutta, she undergoes surgery to clear a blocked blood vessel.

1996: She falls and breaks her collarbone in April; suffers malarial fever and failure of the left heart ventricle in August; and is treated for a chest infection and recurring heart problems in September. She is readmitted to a hospital with chest pains and breathing problems on Nov. 22.

Sept. 5, 1997: She suffers a heart attack and dies at her organization's headquarters in Calcutta. She is 87 years old.

Sept. 13, 1997: Mother Teresa is buried in a state funeral in India.

HER LEGACY:

Her life was an inspiration to many. Today, the Missionaries of Charity has more than 500 houses for the poor, the sick, drug addicts and unwed mothers around the world. MEMO: [This was part of a funeral package entitled "Mother Teresa's

Final Journey"]

This story was compiled from reports by The Associated Press and The

Dallas Morning News. ILLUSTRATION: Photos

1979: Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize

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