Today, when the whole world campaigns for 365 Days of Human Rights, it marks 46 years since Saint Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize.

On December 10, 1979, in Oslo, Norway, Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was declared a Nobel laureate, becoming the first Albanian woman to win the world’s most prestigious award.

At the moment she received the Nobel Prize in 1979, one of the clerics present in the hall asked Mother Teresa where she was from.

She replied:
“I was born in Skopje, educated in London, I live in Calcutta, and I work for all the poor people in the world. My homeland is a small country called Albania.”

That day, the whole world learned that Saint Teresa was Albanian. She faced difficulties speaking fluent Albanian after being away for 70 years and living in non-Albanian environments, but she never denied her Albanian origin.

Her writings in Albanian include her youthful letters and later her correspondence with her family, as well as her greeting in Albanian to the Albanian people after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1979.

She was the guardian mother of 7,500 children in 60 schools, she treated 960,000 sick people in 213 dispensaries, she was the only person in the world caring for 47,000 leprosy victims in 54 clinics, she cared for 3,400 abandoned elderly people in 20 nursing homes, and she had adopted 160 illegitimate and orphaned children. These figures date from the mid-1980s. /KosovaPress/