The Hindu : National : Memorial house for Teresa in Macedonia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 23, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

National

National

Memorial house for Teresa in Macedonia

Special Correspondent

It is set up at the site of a church where she used to pray as young girl

Among the items on display here will be a part of Teresa’s sari
They were given to Macedonia by the Missionaries of Charity

KOLKATA: A portion of a sari Mother Teresa used to wear and a photograph of the statue of the Sacred Heart before which she used to pray as a young girl in a church in Macedonian capital Skopje, where she was born, are among the items that will be on display in a memorial house in her name.

The memorial is built at the site where the church stood in Skopje before it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1967. The items were handed over by the Missionaries of Charity — the order she set up — to Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki here on Thursday.

The Prime Minister of Macedonia will inaugurate the memorial house, set up by his government, on January 30.

“The memorial house is a replica of the one Mother Teresa was born in, only a few hundred meters away,” Mr Milososki told The Hindu.

“The portion of the sari that has been given to us is the part Mother Teresa used to cover her head with. Moreover, a photograph of the statue of the Sacred Heart, which we have received, carries an inscription in Croatian of Mother Teresa in her own handwriting,” he said.

“Mother Teresa was born in Macedonia, but belongs to Kolkata, India… indeed the world. But she represents Macedonia in a symbolic way: small, little, devoted and hardworking. It shows that both a person and a country, regardless how small they are, can achieve a lot through devotion,” Mr. Milososki said.

“Sister Nirmala [Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity] is very happy that the people of Skopje are remembering Mother this way,” a spokesperson of the Missionaries of Charity said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National