CNN - Mother Teresa dead at 87

Mother Teresa dead at 87

'Saint on Earth' suffered
heart failure, malaria
September 5, 1997
Web posted at: 3:05 p.m. EDT (1905 GMT)
CALCUTTA, India (CNN) -- The legendary nun Mother Teresa has died at age 87. She reportedly died of cardiac arrest in her religious order's headquarters in eastern India, Friday. The spokeswoman for Missionaries of Charity said the Roman Catholic nun died at 9:30 p.m.

Mother Teresa spent her life taking care of those she lovingly called "the poorest of the poor." Young and old alike revered the Roman Catholic nun, who became known as a "saint on Earth."

Anita Pratap looks back on the life of Mother Teresa
5 min. VXtreme video

Mother Teresa said she saw Christ in the faces of the poor, the outcast, the maimed and the dying. She felt they all deserved what she called "the delicate love of God."

Wherever she went, her message was the same: "Love the poor." "I think it is really important that we all realize they are our brothers and sisters, and we owe that love and care and concern," she once said.

A symbol of compassion - Mother Teresa's biographer Navin Chawla remembers her

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The diminutive nun took her message of care and concern around the world. She regularly visited the victims of major disasters, praying for their recovery and helping raise money for their care.

Mother Teresa's "Missionaries of Charity" grew from 12 original followers to thousands of sisters working in 450 centers around the world.

Calcutta, India, was Mother Teresa's adopted home. It's where she began her work with the poor, where she earned the nickname "the saint of the gutters."

Early start

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents on August 27, 1910, in what's now Macedonia, part of the former Yugoslavia. She was 18 years old when she went to Dublin, Ireland, to take her vows and become a nun of Loretto, a teaching order that ran convent schools in India. She took the name "Sister Teresa" after Saint Teresa of Lisieux, the patroness of missionaries.

Mother Teresa's tireless efforts on behalf of world peace brought her a number of important humanitarian awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She said such earthly rewards were important only if they helped her help the world's needy. "Pray together and we stay together, and if we stay together, we'll love each other as God himself loves you," Mother Teresa once said.

The small nun with the large heart worked tirelessly to the very end, despite illness in her later years. She was hospitalized in early 1996 after breaking her collarbone in a fall at her Calcutta headquarters.

She received a pacemaker in 1989. In 1983, Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack while meeting Pope John Paul II in Rome.

Mother Teresa's message of love and of hope reached millions. It is a message she prayed would not end when her time on earth was over.

Correspondent Al Hinman, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Mother Teresa special section

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