State Commission on Mother Teresa memorial

TIRANA, Jan. 27 – The government has created a commission that will take care of a memorial that will be raised for Mother Teresa in this year of her 100th birthday Aug. 26.
Important personalities and representatives from many institutions make up the commission headed by deputy culture minister Nikolle Lesi.
It is expected the memorial will be set in a central area in capital Tirana.
Last year Albania almost sparked a diplomatic row with India when Prime Minister Sali Berisha said they wanted the remains of Nobel Peace laureate Mother Teresa to be returned to the country.
Mother Teresa’s remains are in India. Berisha said the government has asked India for the Roman Catholic nun’s to be returned by the 100th anniversary of her birth in August.
Berisha said Albania has started negotiations with India’s government, which “will be intensified this year.”
But India said there have been no talks on that at all and the nuns’ office reacted angrily saying her remains belonged to them.
FYROM and Albania have been engaged in a dispute over the national identity of Mother Teresa, who was born in FYROM to an ethnic Albanian family. She went to Calcutta, India, in 1929, and dedicated herself to the service of the poor and infirm, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
After her death in 1997, she was buried in Calcutta and Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003. Albania’s main airport outside the capital, Tirana, is named after Mother Teresa.