An Post has launched two postage stamps this week to honour International humanitarians Mother Teresa, who ministered to the poor in Calcutta; and Henry Dunant, International founder of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.Both have strong connections with Ireland.
Mother Teresa was an Albanian nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She was born in 1910 and her mother raised her as a Roman Catholic.
She was 18 when she left home on her first journey abroad to Ireland where she spent several months with the Sisters of the Loreto in Rathfarnham in Dublin learning English.
In 1929 she travelled to India and took her vows as a nun. Thereafter she worked as a teacher in Calcutta. The fate that awaited the poor in the city had an enormous effect on her. In 1950 she started what became known internationally as the Missionaries of Charity.
She died on September 5 1997.
Henry Dunant was born in Geneva in Switzerland in 1928. The Battle of Solfernio, when France fought Austria in Northern Italy, was the turning point in his life.
Dunant was shocked to discover that nearly 40,000 people lay dead, dying and wounded on the battlefield with no one to take care of them.
Four years later a committee met in Geneva in 1863, which became the starting point for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The following year, twelve states signed the first Geneva Convention agreeing to the rules of war engagement.
Dunant received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 and passed away in 1910.
On August 1 1939 a branch of the International Red Cross was established in Ireland by an act of the Oireachtas.
The stamps were designed by top artist Ger Garland.
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