In service of the poor

FROM the putrid back alleys of Calcutta to the shanty towns of South Africa, Mother Teresa’s compassion touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of the poorest of the world’s poor.

The frail nun, who died in 1997 after spending more than six decades caring for the destitute and homeless, was beatified yesterday by Pope John Paul II at a two-hour long ceremony in Rome. Beatification is the final step on the path to sainthood.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, in Skopje, the capital of modern-day Macedonia, Mother Teresa was the youngest of three children of an Albanian farmer.