In the month of July 2003 much noise was made in the Albanian-language press about a Slav-Macedonian gift to Rome. Apparently, Slavs had planned to donate a statue of Mother Teresa to the city of Rome; such statue would bear the Cyrillic inscription ‘Mother Teresa – daughter of the Macedonian nation’; the square in which the statue would be placed would be named ‘Piazza Macedonia’. According to ANSA, distinguished Albanians then sent a petition to Rome’s mayor, Walter Veltroni, to remind him that Mother Teresa was Albanian, not Macedonian, and certainly not a Slav-Macedonian.
Why did a gift to Rome upset Albanians?
Albanians see the Slav-Macedonian gift to Rome as a crass attempt to use Mother Teresa’s good name for the glorification of a place in which Albanians, including Mother Teresa’s family, were persecuted. The Catholic cemetery in Skopje, where family members of Mother Teresa had been buried, has been destroyed. Mother Teresa’s own mother is buried in the periphery of Tirana. How could they try to even remotely imply that Mother Teresa was a Slav-Macedonian?
“Doubts” about the Albanian origins of Mother Teresa are not justified. The news stories expressing such doubts, from BBC and others, all quoted a Slav-Macedonian journalist called Jasmina Mironski. Apparently, since no one can say that Mother Teresa is not Albanian — because Mother Teresa herself had made it clear that she was Albanian — Jasmina Mironski and others like her have made it their mission to prove that Mother Teresa is not 100% Albanian. They waited for her to die first however; my guess is that they would not dare while Mother Teresa was still alive.What Mironski and others like her say is one or more of the following: Nikolla Bojaxhiu — Mother Teresa’s father — was:
1. A Vlach — the ignorants say that the ending (“u”) makes it sound like a Vlach name.
2. A Serb — because Mother Teresa’s brother was named Lazër and that sounds like a Serb name.
3. Anything else, except for an Albanian.
Anyone who knows minimal Albanian, knows that the word “Bojaxhiu” means “The painter” (of the sort that paints houses); as for the ending, ‘u’ is the ending of the definite form of many Albanian masculine nouns; in fact, it is quite common for an Albanian family name to end with a ‘u’. The ‘u’ certainly does not make “Bojaxhiu” a Vlach name. As for Mother Teresa’s brother being some sort of Serb, in an interview published in the Italian magazine Gente (Dec. 1979 and Jan. 1980) Lazër Bojaxhiu said that his father was poisoned by Serbs for being too much of an Albanian; in addition, there are many Albanians who are named Lazër or Llazar, and they probably wouln’t agree with anyone who told them that they were Serbs.
That Mother Teresa was Albanian, for this there is no doubt because:
1. She had said so herself.
2. She was born to Albanian parents.
3. Her name, Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, cannot be more Albanian than that.
4. The town where she was born, which Slavs call Skopje and Albanians call Shkup, has been home to Albanians for centuries and centuries.
