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Mother Teresa: Road to Sainthood Started in Small Kosovo Church

by Besim Abazi

   LETNICA, KOSOVO --

   On September 4, the world will watch as Mother Teresa - a woman whom
   the world has come to know as a humanitarian and founder of the
   Missionaries of Charity, will be canonized by the Catholic Church. A
   small community in Kosovo, where she spent time in her youth, is
   celebrating this momentous occasion and remembering the role their
   congregation played in inspiring the young woman to a life of devotion.

   To the world, Mother Teresa came to be known as the mother of the poor
   and the needy, a symbol of a life of service to mankind. She began her
   charity work in India, where she was sent in 1929 by her religious
   congregation, the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. But she embraced her
   calling in the small Kosovo village of Letnica. Then a young woman of
   18, she lived in Kosovo, where her family had resettled from her native
   Macedonia.

   A devout Catholic from an early age, she would later reveal that it was
   in the Church of the Blessed Lady in Letnica that she decided to adopt
   a life of religious devotion.

   The church today serves a community of 500 Catholics, in a village
   populated mostly by Albanians, with a small Croatian minority. The
   congregation is headed by Father Marjan Lorenci.

   "This is where Mother Teresa felt the holy calling, after she arrived
   here from Macedonia, from Skopje. She came here because God brought her
   here with her family, and it is here that she heard God's word. This is
   where she took her steps on the path to serve God, and what's more
   important, to serve her fellow man," Lorenci said.

   For the local community, the canonization is a source of pride and a
   chance to share the famous missionary of Albanian origin with the
   world. Kosovare Xhoni, a member of the congregation, feels privileged.

   "I was born and raised here, and I am very proud to have received my
   religious teachings at the same church where Mother Teresa first felt
   her calling," Xhoni said.

   Father Lush Gjergji, who first met Mother Teresa in 1968 and has
   written extensively on the Nobel laureate, says Letnica was always in
   her itinerary every time she visited Kosovo.

   "The one place which she always visited was Letnica; it was her
   spiritual sanctuary," said Gjergji, who serves as vicar of the Kosovo
   Archbishopric.

   Mother Teresa visited Kosovo five times after she became a nun. But it
   is her charitable work around the world that garnered her international
   fame and the adoration of millions.

   On September 4, the Catholic Church will formally declare her a saint,
   immortalizing a life of dedication that got its first inspiration in a
   church in a small Kosovo village.