Oct. 10: Albania wants India to hand over the remains of Mother Teresa, the country’s Prime Minister has said.

Mother Teresa’s remains are in Mother House in Calcutta where she is buried.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s government has asked India for the Roman Catholic nun’s remains to be handed over by the 100th anniversary of her birth in August next year.

Berisha said Albania had started negotiations with the Indian government, which “will be intensified this year”.

In Calcutta, a spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity said: “We are unable to comment because we are unaware of any such development.”

Sources in Delhi pointed out that Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and it would be “extremely complex and difficult” to accept Albania’s demand.

Catholic Bishops Conference of India spokesperson Fr Babu Joseph said the Catholic Church in India had not got any information regarding the demand. Asked whether the CBCI would agree to such a demand, he said it was up to the Missionaries of Charity to take a decision.

Macedonia and Albania have been engaged in a dispute over the national identity of Mother Teresa, who was born in Macedonia to an ethnic Albanian family. She reached Calcutta in 1929 and dedicated herself to the service of the poor and the infirm, receiving the Nobel peace prize in 1979.

She died in Calcutta in 1997 and Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003.

Albania’s main airport outside the capital, Tirana, is named after Mother Teresa. Since the fall of communism in 1991, Albania has been a parliamentary republic.