Mother Teresa — the Nobel Laureate Born on a Skopje Street Now Called Macedonia Square
One of the most recognized humanitarians in modern history was born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910. Here's what her early life in the city actually looked like, before Calcutta, before the Nobel Prize, before the name the world would come to know her by.
Every year on 26 August, Skopje marks the birth of one of the most recognized women of the 20th century — born not in India, where her life's work unfolded, but on a city street that today sits within Macedonia Square, in the heart of the Old Bazaar.
A Name That Means "Rosebud"
She was born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on 26 August 1910, at number 14 on what was then called Pop Kočina Street. Her father Nikolla is remembered as a merchant (some accounts say a pharmacist's assistant) and served as the only Catholic member of the Skopje city council. Her mother Drana was devoutly religious. Gonxhe — an Albanian name meaning "rosebud" or "flower bud" — was the youngest of three children, after her sister Age (born 1904) and brother Lazar (born 1908).
A Family Shaped by Loss and Faith
Her father died in 1919, when Gonxhe was only eight. Her mother, left to support the family, took up sewing and embroidery work. Despite hardship, the household kept its emphasis on faith, charity and helping anyone in need — values that would define her entire life. At eighteen, in 1928, she left Skopje for good, travelling through Dublin to Bengal, India. Within two months she had joined the Sisters of Loreto — the last time she would ever see her mother and sister.
From Calcutta's Streets to the Nobel Prize
In India she founded the Missionaries of Charity, an order devoted to serving the poorest and sickest, and became known to the world simply as Mother Teresa. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She returned to visit her native Skopje four times after leaving — in 1970, 1978, 1980 and 1986 — and in 1980 was made an honorary citizen of the city she was born in.
A Global Farewell
Mother Teresa died on 5 September 1997 in Calcutta, at the age of 87. The Indian government held a state funeral in her honor on 13 September, an extraordinary gesture for a foreign-born nun. Two years later, Pope John Paul II opened the diocesan phase of her beatification process; she was ultimately canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church.
🔵 Her birthplace on Pop Kočina Street stood where Skopje's Macedonia Square is today.
🔵 "Gonxhe," her birth name, is an Albanian word meaning rosebud.
🔵 She left Skopje at 18 and never saw her mother or sister again.
🔵 Skopje's Memorial House of Mother Teresa, built near her birth site, houses her prayer book and a copy of her 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.
MKNews Hub · "Did You Know?" Series · Episode 3 · August 13, 2026