Cardinal Vinko Pulić, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, has been named envoy for a Mother Teresa celebration in the Macedonian capital of Skopje.
According to Vatican Radio, Pope Francis chose the prelate to represent him at the conclusion of a day of thanksgiving for Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s canonization, taking place in the city on Sept. 11, a week after her widely-anticipated canonization being held Sept. 4 in St. Peter’s Square.
On Oct. 19 2003, Mother Teresa was beatified after Pope St. John Paul II recognized her miraculous healing of an Indian woman with a tumor in her abdomen. On Dec. 17, 2015, Pope Francis recognized the miraculous healing of the late sister’s intercession of a Brazilian man with multiple brain abscesses.
Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910, while the city was part of the Ottoman Empire, Blessed Teresa, known to the world as Mother Theresa, would found the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity and the Missionaries of Charity, and exemplified holiness in all she did. On Sept. 5, 1997, in Calcutta, Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack and died at 87 years old.
While she was an ethnic Albanian, due to conflicts in the Balkans in the early part of the 20th century, such as World War I, Skopje was under various jurisdictions. As a result, at different times, she held Ottoman, Serbian, and Yugoslavian citizenship. In 1948, Mother Teresa became a citizen of her adoptive India.
Currently, Skopje is the capital of the modern Republic of Macedonia, which, in 1991, declared independence from Yugoslavia.
