Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Skopje, Yugoslavia and decided to join religious life at a young age. In the 1940s, she began missionary work in India, founding the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 to care for the poor and sick in Kolkata. Over the following decades, she oversaw the growth of her order and the opening of homes, schools, and hospices across India and around the world. She received numerous honors for her humanitarian work, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, before her death in 1997.