Macedonia, Albania fight to claim Teresa

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.

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.

Nobody disputes that she was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, and that her mother, Dranafila, was of ethnic-Albanian origin, born in Kosovo. But many in Macedonia doubt that her father was Albanian. Some claim he was Valach, while others insist he was of Zinzar origin.

Valachs and Zinzars, distinct ethnic groups living in the southeastern Balkans, have been assimilated by the majority Slavs over the centuries. Albanian intellectuals and politicians in Skopje and Tirana, the capital of Albania, are trying to prevent the statue being presented to Rome in its current form. Albania’s most famous writer, Ismail Kadare, described the statue and its inscription as ‘‘anti-Albanian racism’’.

The ethnic-Albanian community makes up about one fourth of Macedonia’s population of two million. Tensions remain high two years after the government struck a peace deal with Albanian rebels who had waged a seven-month uprising to demand greater freedom.

Macedonian officials, for their part, say they only want to honour Mother Teresa’s legacy. ‘‘Mother Teresa was born in Skopje. She grew up here, went to school here, and we are proud of her order, which has become known throughout the world for its humanity,’’ Skopje mayor Risto Penov told AFP.

He said there was nothing controversial about the statue. ‘‘We simply want to honour her, and the statue will only have an inscription with her name, date of birth and death. Nothing more,’’ he said.