I am very pleased that the Quote of the Day published in the Times of Malta on August 27 came from Mother Theresa, a Catholic icon, in celebration of her 105th birthday anniversary. Thank you for an excellent choice.

I am writing, however, with reference to the short bionote that accompanied Mother Theresa’s quote. It is factually incorrect to describe her as Yugoslavian.

Yugoslavia did not exist in 1910 when Mother Theresa was born. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia emerged in 1929 as the new name for the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes established in 1918.

‘Yugoslavian’ means ‘South Slav’. Mother Theresa was not a Slav. She was born to Albanian parents in Skopje which, at that time, formed part of the Ottoman Empire, Skopje being one of the most multi-ethnic places in the Balkans.

When the Ottoman Empire disintegrated following the Balkan Wars that occurred in 1912-1913, Skopje was assigned to Serbia and from 1991 it has served as the capital city of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

In 1910, there was no Yugoslav identity as such.

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