Saint Paul’s Catholic Cathedral

In front of you stands Saint Paul’s Catholic Cathedral, inaugurated in 2001, with a contemporary, understated design filled with light that contrasts with Tirana’s historic buildings and reflects a clear sense of openness and modernity. The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Paul, a figure linked to dialogue and travel, whose statue can be seen at the top of the structure. At the base of the cathedral, on the right, you’ll notice a white sculpture honoring the most famous Albanian in the world. Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, into a Catholic Albanian family originally from northern Albania. Although she spent most of her life far from her homeland, her Albanian identity always remained central to who she was. At just eighteen, she left her family to go to India, where she devoted her life to serving the poorest of the poor. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, a congregation dedicated to caring for the sick, the dying, the excluded and the homeless. Her work, carried out in great simplicity, brought her worldwide recognition, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. For many years, communist Albania, which had officially declared itself an atheist state, prevented her from returning to her country of origin, and it was only in the late 80s that she was finally able to visit Albania again, shortly before the regime collapsed. Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, in Calcutta, the city she had chosen as her home and place of service until the very end. Tirana, which has never forgotten this universal figure, honors her today through several symbolic sites, including the vast Mother Teresa Square and this modest, yet deeply meaningful statue.