Skopje's most famous daughter was undoubtedly Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa. She was born on August 26, 1910 in a house that was later demolished to make way for the City Shopping Center and where a small plaque marks the spot where the house stood. At the time Skopje was part of the Ottoman Empire, the state of Macedonia didn't exist and Agnes' family was Catholic ethnic Albanian, so there's no saying what her nationality exactly was, although this matters little as the lady herself always considered herself a daughter of Skopje and a citizen of the world. Agnesë spent 18 years in Skopje, vowing to go to India after hearing letters from missionaries read out during church meetings. She joined the Sisters of Loretto in 1927 taking the name Teresa, and a year later started teaching geography in Calcutta (modern day Kolkata). After becoming a nurse she took charge of a pilgrims’ hostel, became an Indian citizen and founded her own order in 1948, dedicated to helping the poorest of the poor. She won many awards over the years, including the Nobel peace prize in 1979, and returned to Skopje four times before her death in 1997 at the age of 87. Despite stiff opposition, notably from the journalist Christopher Hitchens who claims that Mother Teresa openly confessed that rather than working towards alleviating poverty she was merely spreading Catholicism with her work, on October 19, 2003, Mother Teresa was posthumously bestowed the title of Blessed, the second stage of a three-part process ending in the canonisation of the lady. As well as her many detractors, Mother Teresa was regarded by many as a living saint, and Catholics across the world now refer to her as the Blessed Teresa. At Makedonija 6 there’s a statue of Mother Teresa (with her toes curiously crossed, apparently because of wearing small shoes as a child). A small museum is dedicated to her in the Feudal Tower, just behind the statue.
