The icon of "Mother Teresa", hostage to decisions that institutions do not recognize; The impasse begins at the Municipality of Tirana

About three years ago, Erion Veliaj and the Metropolitan Archbishop, His Grace Arjan Dodaj, signed the erection of a monument in honor of Saint "Mother Teresa" with an area of ​​1.7592 ha of forest type.

The process began with the approval of the project by the City Council in October 2022 and continued with the drafting of the report by the Parks and Recreation Agency in April 2023. In June of that same year,

The Ministry rejected the Agency's request because the administrative process followed was based on an annulled decision. The request had to be followed through an application on the e-Albania portal.

On September 5, 2022, the Day of the Canonization of Mother Teresa, Mayor Erion Veliaj and the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Tirana-Durres, Archbishop Arjan Dodaj, were seen in a filmed event for the public signing an agreement for the construction of the marker in honor of Saint “Mother Teresa” which would serve as a place of reflection and prayer for believers. The memorandum, as of time, was signed earlier, at the end of August (31.08.2022). For the construction of the marker, it is determined that the Municipality of Tirana must transfer to the Archbishopric an area of ​​​​the “Forest” type of 17,592 square meters. The Municipal Council made the decision on this issue on November 15 of the same year (2022). A week later, Veliaj mentioned it again.

"Soon, in the Lake Hills, we will also establish a shrine to Mother Teresa, as a place of reflection and prayer, tranquility and peace," Veliaj declared at the time, but without specifying a deadline.

On January 16, 2025, Faktoje.al was on the ground to closely observe the situation in the Lapidari area, where the construction of the Mother Teresa monument had been promised. During the verification, there was no sign of the start of work on the erection of the monument. The area was covered with vegetation and had difficult terrain for vehicle movement.

Faktoje.al had previously addressed a request for information to the Municipality of Tirana (November 20, 2024) on the progress of the project.

Two months after sending the request (including the complaint to the Commissioner for the Right to Information and Personal Data Protection), the Municipality of Tirana (specifically the Parks and Recreation Agency) provided an exhaustive response on the progress of the process, which hints at a lot about why such a project, trumpeted with such fanfare by Mayor Erion Veliaj (at various times), had not taken shape on the ground.

Progress  
Based on the response sent by the Municipality, the area of ​​1.7592 ha, part of the Krrabë-Gurë 2 forest and pasture plot, owned by the Municipality of Tirana, is administered by the Parks and Recreation Agency.

From the decision taken in November 2022, the Parks and Recreation Agency was only put into motion in April 2023 by drafting the report on the technical-economic study for the removal of the area (1.7592 ha) from the forest and pasture fund owned by the Municipality of Tirana.

A month later from the drafting of the report, the Municipal Council gives approval to continue the procedures, again tasking the Parks and Recreation Agency which (on June 7, 2023) addresses the request to the last link, the Ministry of Tourism and Environment, to remove the area from the forest fund.

Where has the project stalled?
Two weeks after the request was sent by the Parks Agency, the Ministry of Tourism and Environment notified it through a letter that the request (along with the documentation) for removal from the forest fund is carried out not according to the decision that (until then) the Agency had been referred to (no. 1353, date 10.10.2008) but another decision, which had at the same time repealed the previous one. Which means that the legal decision treated as a reference by the Parks Agency for the administrative process (three months of work) was repealed by a new decision of the Council of Ministers taken much earlier than the beginning of the procedures for the removal of the forest area. 

The decision (no. 888, dated 27.12.2022) was signed just one month after the Municipal Council approved the memorandum for the erection of the marker in honor of Saint Mother Teresa. According to the decision, requests for such cases, from the beginning, must be made through another channel, the e-Albania portal.

The Municipality's response does not provide any further information on what has been done since the Ministry's letter was returned (June 2023) to date.

Therefore, whether maliciously or not, the raising of the marker results (so far) in us having remained hostage to bureaucracy, structural problems in the functioning of institutions, the lack of communication between them, and even more so the lack of recognition of the very decisions they issue. Faktoje.al