Albania Presses India for the Remains of Mother Teresa

Indian authorities have rejected a request from their Albanian counterparts to hand over the remains of Mother Teresa, who died in 1997 aged 87.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26 1910 in the Ottoman-ruled city of Uskub, known today as Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, Mother Teresa's parents were of Albanian origin, an ethnicity which the woman beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003 acknowledged as her own. As the Times of India reports Mother Teresa initially traveled to India in 1929, whilst a novitiate, taking her first vows as a nun in 1931 when she assumed the name by which she became so famous. In 1950 she established the Missionaries of Charity, an order dedicated to helping the sick, destitute and abandoned on the streets of what was then Calcutta and is now Kolkata. A year later she was granted Indian citizenship. It appears that Mother Teresa, who many are hoping will be canonized come the 100th anniversary of her birth next year, recognized the different facets of her identity because, according to CNN, she had declared:

By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world

But now, with his country planning to open a museum in honor of Mother Teresa and stage events in 2010 intended to commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has asked India to hand over the remains of the woman who the Times of India says was referred to by many as the "Saint of the Gutters". Mr Berisha, strictly speaking he is Dr. Berisha, being both a cardiologist and professor, has also asserted that passing her remains to Albania would allow Mother Teresa to be buried next to her mother and sister in a cemetery in Tirana, the Albanian capital. Claiming that he was told by the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 and became an honorary U.S. citizen in 1996 that "she prayed every day for her family and her country", Mr Berisha said that his request for Mother Teresa's remains "is a very human one". However the Indian government is not sympathetic to Mr Berisha's request to remove Mother Teresa from her current resting place in the Missionaries of Charity compound in central Kolkata , foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash having stated:

Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land

The Catholic Bishops Conference of India has supported the stance adopted by the government of India, Father Babu Joseph, a spokesman for the Conference explaining:

The Catholic church gladly welcomes the response of the external affairs ministry that Mother Teresa was fully an Indian citizen. We would want her remains to be in India. Mother Teresa had all through her life and activities built up a strong bond with all sections of Indian society and she is respected by all in the country. And this was the filial relationship between the Mother and Indians, which cannot be overlooked