Born a humble girl in what is now Albania, Agnes Bojaxhiu lived a
charitable life. She pledged herself to a religious order at the age of
18 and chose the name Sister Teresa, after the patron saint of
missionaries. While teaching in India, where famine and violence had
devastated the poor, Teresa shed her habit and walked the streets of
Calcutta tending to the needs of the destitute. Her charity work soon
expanded internationally, and her name remains synonymous with
compassion and devotion to the poor.