Could share some belongings of Teresa with Albania: Church

Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) President Cardinal Oswal Gracias said the Church was ready to share Mother's belongings with Albania in the presence of Vatican's Papal Envoy Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who is in the capital for commemorating the 25th anniversary celebrations of the first visit of Pope John Paul II to India in 1986.

In 2009, the government had rejected Albania's demand for Mother Teresa's remains, saying she was an Indian citizen. Gracias, however, told reporters that the Church could not part away with her remains as her "presence" should be in India, where the Nobel Laureate who is known as 'Saint of the Gutters' spent her life tending to the poor and needy.

"Some of her belongings certainly. But her presence should be here," Cardinal Oswal Gracias said replying to a question. He, however, refused Albania's demand for her remains.

Gracias, who said the Church normally shared belongings connected with holy person's life with other countries, added that the Church could provide some of the belongings if the government take such a view.

"Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land. The question (of her remains being taken back to Albania) does not arise at all," foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash had said.

The ethnic Albanian nun, who worked among the poor of Kolkata till her death in 1997, was given Indian citizenship in 1951. Mother Teresa, whose 100th birth anniversary was celebrated in August last year, was buried at the Kolkata headquarters of her Missionaries of Charity order, which has now become a pilgrimage centre.
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Mother Teresa arrived in India as a novitiate in 1929.

She took the name of Teresa on taking her vows as a nun in 1931 and in 1950 established the Missionaries of Charity order.