Mother Teresa Statue Will Adorn FYROM Capital; Coming to Skopje Near Alexander the Great Statue

The spree in erecting giant monuments in Skopje -- the capital of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) -- continues, as Macedonian authorities lay grounds for a new 30-meter-high statue dedicated to Nobel Prize-winning nun Mother Teresa, the Balkan Insight website reports today (January 26, 2013).

The statue of the late nun -- who was born in Skopje to an Albanian family but spent most of her life in India -- is to be erected on Skopje's main Macedonia Square.

The cash is coming from the Indian billionaire Subrata Roy who is on a business visit to FYROM. "Here we will build the home of Mother Teresa. I have a proposal ... to call it the Statue of Humanity," Roy said at the groundbreaking ceremony on January 25.

After the giant statues of Alexander the Great and his father, Philip, were erected in Skopje in 2011 and 2012 respectively, Mother Teresa's statue will be the third huge monument to adorn the center of the FYROM capital. Greece has criticized the Alexander the Great and Philip statues being erected in Skopje, because there is a state in northern Greece by the name of Macedonia, where they were born. Many Greeks believe that -- by having these statues in Skopje --  FYROM is trying to convey that Alexander the Great and Philip were of Yugoslavian background, when, in fact, historians have proven that they were of Greek ancestry.