Albania on holiday for Mother Teresa’s beatification

TIRANA, Oct. 19 – Albania was Thursday on a national holiday on the occasion of the beatification day for its idol Mother Teresa. That has turned into an annual holiday to respect the saint. Mother Teresa, a Nobel Prize winner in 1979, is an ethnic Albanian, who has long been revered in this mostly Muslim country. Tirana’s international airport and main hospital are named in her honor, and there is a memorial to her at the National Museum, which also has an annex devoted to her. Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003, putting her on the road to possible sainthood for her life’s work building shelters, orphanages and clinics around the world to care for the downtrodden. Born in neighboring Macedonia to an ethnic Albanian family, she went to Calcutta, India, in 1929, and began a life dedicated to the service of the poor and infirm. She died in 1997. Albania, a predominantly Muslim nation with large Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic minorities, is officially a secular nation, and relations between religious communities are generally good.