Resources for Teachers and Students on Mother Teresa

Prepare: Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Her biography and the text of her Nobel laureate lecture can be found on the Nobel site.

Read: Mother Teresa wrote an original essay for the Architects of Peace project. In it, she explored the need to care for the poor in order to achieve peace.

Explore: Mother Teresa wrote very little during the course of her ministry. A woman of action, she preferred to lead by example, spending as much time as possible with the poor people to whom she'd dedicated her life. A short film documentary where she explains her relationship to the poor can be viewed free of charge over the internet, courtesy of the Nobelprize.org.

Write: In her Architects of Peace essay, Mother Teresa stated that "nations put too much effort and money into defending their borders." She argues that the world would be a more peaceful place if such funds went into the defense of the poor in terms of providing them with food, clothing and shelter. Is this a realistic argument? Using internet and library resources, attempt to discover what percentage of the International Gross Domestic Product is dedicated to defense spending, as opposed to the percentage invested in poverty relief. Compose a short, two-to-three page paper highlighting the results of your research, and a hypothesis, if possible, about the relationship between defense spending and efforts to eliminate poverty.

Extend: Mother Teresa described a "simple path" to peace, saying that the fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace. Were she here to help develop this lesson plan, she might tell us simply to follow the path.

Additional Resource: Less than two years after her death, Pope John Paul II authorized an investigation to look into the possibility of canonizing Mother Teresa as a saint. Such a rush towards canonization is without precedent in the Catholic Church in modern times, since a five-year waiting period is a standard before investigations can be begun. Mother Teresa was beatified, a step in the canonization process, on October 19, 2003. The Vatican website maintains pages commemorating the beatification ceremonies, including a biography, the text of the papal homily, et cetera.

Biography of Mother Teresa