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Mother Teresa statue stirs spirits in Macedonia, Albania
Skopje, Aug 27: While the world prepares to celebrate the beatification of Mother Teresa, her own people are bickering over a statue of the future saint.
Skopje, Aug 27: While the world prepares to celebrate the beatification of Mother Teresa, her own people are bickering over a statue of the future saint.
And in tragic Balkan style, the dispute hinges on her
ethnicity. Was she Albanian or Valach, or Slav, or Zinzar?
The words which have ignited the row do not, of course, come from the late Mother Teresa herself, who has inspired millions of people around the world with her charity and compassion.
Instead, they come from the Cyrillic inscription on the statue, which reportedly reads: "Macedonia honours its daughter Gonxha Boiaxhiu."
Politicians and intellectuals in Macedonia and neighouring Albania, as well as within Macedonia's restive ethnic-Albanian minority, all want to claim the future saint as their own, hoping perhaps to share in her glory.
Mother Teresa will be beatified in Rome on October 19 by Pope John Paul II only six years after her death - the shortest beatification process in Catholic church history. She devoted her life to helping the poorest of the poor, and won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Kolkata.
Throughout her life she seemed to studiously avoid the issue of her ethnic origin, even before the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s pitted Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Croats against each other. Bureau Report
The words which have ignited the row do not, of course, come from the late Mother Teresa herself, who has inspired millions of people around the world with her charity and compassion.
Instead, they come from the Cyrillic inscription on the statue, which reportedly reads: "Macedonia honours its daughter Gonxha Boiaxhiu."
Politicians and intellectuals in Macedonia and neighouring Albania, as well as within Macedonia's restive ethnic-Albanian minority, all want to claim the future saint as their own, hoping perhaps to share in her glory.
Mother Teresa will be beatified in Rome on October 19 by Pope John Paul II only six years after her death - the shortest beatification process in Catholic church history. She devoted her life to helping the poorest of the poor, and won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Kolkata.
Throughout her life she seemed to studiously avoid the issue of her ethnic origin, even before the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s pitted Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Croats against each other. Bureau Report