50 free Mother Teresa trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mother Teresa was one of the most famous people of the twentieth century, and this quiz covers her whole story: the Albanian girl born in Ottoman Skopje, the Loreto teacher in Calcutta, the "call within the call" on a train to Darjeeling, the white sari with blue borders, the Nobel Peace Prize, the decades of secret spiritual darkness and the 2016 canonisation. Easy questions ask which city she worked in and what her order is called; harder ones dig into the saint she named herself after, the banquet she cancelled in Oslo, the ceasefire she brokered in Beirut, her fiercest critic and the miracle disputed by the patient's own husband. The questions cover the honours and the controversies alike, so the round is fair to admirers and sceptics. It suits religion and history quizzes, school projects and anyone curious about a life that still divides opinion. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Mother Teresa, the Missionaries of Charity and the people and books connected with her, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city, then part of the Ottoman Empire, was Mother Teresa born in 1910?
Skopje
The city is now the capital of North Macedonia, and it opened a Memorial House in her honour in 2009.
Q 02What was Mother Teresa's ethnic background?
Albanian
She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu; Gonxhe means "flower bud" in Albanian.
Q 03What was Mother Teresa's given name at birth?
Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu
Anjezë is a cognate of Agnes; she considered 27 August, the day of her baptism, her "true birthday".
Q 04Which religious order did the 18-year-old Anjezë travel to Ireland to join in 1928?
The Sisters of Loreto
She went to Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham to learn English, the language of instruction at the order's schools in India, and never saw her mother again.
Q 05Mother Teresa chose her religious name in honour of which saint?
Thérèse de Lisieux
Because another nun already had that name, she took the Spanish spelling, Teresa.
Q 06Where in India did she begin her novitiate in 1929 and learn Bengali?
Darjeeling
She taught at St. Teresa's School near the convent in the lower Himalayas and took her first vows in May 1931.
Q 07What position did she hold at the Loreto convent school in Entally, Calcutta, from 1944?
Headmistress
She taught there for nearly twenty years, increasingly disturbed by the poverty outside and the Bengal famine of 1943.
Q 08Where was Mother Teresa when she experienced the "call within the call" on 10 September 1946?
On a train to Darjeeling
She said the message was clear: leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.
Q 09What did Mother Teresa adopt as the habit of the Missionaries of Charity?
A white sari with blue borders
Novices wear white saris without the three blue stripes until they take their vows.
Q 10In what year did the Vatican approve what became the Missionaries of Charity?
1950
It was to care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers" and all who felt unwanted.
Q 11Where did Mother Teresa receive basic medical training before venturing into the Calcutta slums?
Holy Family Hospital, Patna
She also took Indian citizenship and started a school in Motijhil before turning to the sick and hungry.
Q 12Her first hospice, opened in 1952 in a former Hindu temple, was called Nirmal Hriday, meaning what?
Home of the Pure Heart
Muslims there were read the Quran, Hindus received Ganges water and Catholics received the last rites.
Q 13What was the name of the leprosy hospice she opened, meaning "City of Peace"?
Shanti Nagar
Q 21What did Mother Teresa ask to be done with the money for the traditional Nobel banquet?
Give it to the poor in India
The banquet would have cost $192,000; asked how to promote world peace, she replied, "Go home and love your family."
Q 22Asked at the Nobel ceremony what people could do for world peace, what did Mother Teresa reply?
"Go home and love your family"
In her lecture she said the poverty of the West, of feeling unwanted and unloved, was harder to remove than hunger.
Q 23Which Indian honour, the country's highest civilian award, did she receive in 1980?
Bharat Ratna
The order also ran mobile leprosy clinics across Calcutta handing out medication, dressings and food.
Q 14Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, opened in 1955, served which group?
Orphans and homeless children
The name means Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart.
Q 15In which country did the Missionaries of Charity open their first house outside India, in 1965?
Venezuela
Rome, Tanzania and Austria followed in 1968, and the first US house opened in the South Bronx.
Q 16Where was the first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States established?
The South Bronx, New York
By 1984 the order ran 19 establishments across the country.
Q 17Besides poverty, chastity and obedience, what fourth vow do Missionaries of Charity take?
Free service to the poorest of the poor
By 2012 the congregation had more than 4,500 nuns working in over 133 countries.
Q 18How many languages was Mother Teresa reported to speak fluently?
Five
Bengali, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, English and Hindi.
Q 19How many children did Mother Teresa rescue from a front-line hospital in the 1982 Siege of Beirut?
37
She crossed the war zone with Red Cross workers to evacuate the young patients.
Q 20In which year did Mother Teresa receive the Nobel Peace Prize?
1979
The citation praised her work overcoming poverty and distress "which also constitutes a threat to peace".
She had received the Padma Shri in 1962 and was issued an Indian diplomatic passport under the name Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu.
Q 24Which 1969 BBC documentary by Malcolm Muggeridge made Mother Teresa an international celebrity?
Something Beautiful for God
Muggeridge claimed dim footage from the Home for the Dying came out lit by "divine light"; the crew credited a new ultra-sensitive Kodak film.
Q 25How did the crew explain the surprisingly well-lit footage that Muggeridge called a miracle?
A new type of ultra-sensitive Kodak film
Muggeridge, an agnostic turned believer, later converted to Catholicism.
Q 26Which pope gave Mother Teresa the inaugural Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971?
Paul VI
She also received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1962, the Balzan Prize in 1978 and Britain's Order of Merit in 1983.
Q 27How much money did Mother Teresa reportedly have on arriving in India, marked on a 2010 coin?
5 rupees
India issued the special ₹5 coin on the centenary of her birth in August 2010.
Q 28Which English journalist was Mother Teresa's most outspoken critic, calling her "a friend of poverty"?
Christopher Hitchens
His 1994 documentary Hell's Angel preceded his book The Missionary Position, and he later testified to the Vatican tribunal.
Q 29What was the title of Hitchens's 1994 documentary about Mother Teresa?
Hell's Angel
It argued that she urged the poor to accept their fate while portraying the rich as favoured by God.
Q 30Which convicted American financier's trial judge did Mother Teresa write to asking for clemency?
Charles Keating
She was also criticised for accepting honours from Haiti's Duvalier regime and for her links with Robert Maxwell.