Saints be praised!
The president of the Republic of Albania Bujar Nishani came out to Mapleton to honor the recently sainted nun Mother Teresa at a statue-unveiling ceremony on Sept. 25. Thousands packed Saint Athanasius Church and spilled out into the streets to commemorate the Nobel Prize-winning nun’s Albanian roots. Teresa may have been Catholic, but the ceremony was a multi-religious tribute to her work, said one organizer.
“Mother Teresa honored all Albanians with the great work that she did,” said Marko Kepi, the president of the Albanian Roots cultural organization. “She was beyond her faith when it came to helping people, and we felt it was important to have people of different faiths, backgrounds, and nationalities come, because that’s what she was all about.”
Local pols and cultural leaders unveiled the statue in front of the church on the corner of 61st Street and Bay Parkway. The ceremony featured traditional Albanian music and dance, and prayer hosted by religious leaders from the East Midwood Jewish Center, Saint Nicolas Albanian Orthodox Church, and the Albanian Islamic Center of Staten Island.
Indian and Irish dance troops cut a rug, because the saint became a nun in Ireland and primarily worked in India, said Kepi.
The Albanian Roots organization paid for the statue — which features a plaque that discusses her ethnic heritage — and choose to place the figure in Southern Brooklyn because of the area’s large Albanian population. Community members from a variety of faiths came together and donated their services to install the effigy, said Kepi.
“When I spoke to the volunteers, they said they’ll do anything for Mother Teresa,” he said. “Them being Albanian they saw her Albanian roots as something to be proud of and they wanted to share that with others.”
