Faithful flock to Kosovo church ahead of nun’s canonization.
LETNICA, Kosovo — The thousands of pilgrims who flocked to the bright white Church of the Black Madonna this year were hoping to receive the gift of grace that one of its most famous parishioners once experienced.
A once thriving Croat village reduced to only 300 people since the Yugoslav Wars of the ‘90s, Letnica is an important destination for thousands of Catholics, Orthodox Christians and even Muslims during a nine-day period that ended with the Feast of the Assumption this past Monday
“This festival is honored by Catholics, but for centuries, it has been celebrated by all the other religions and nations,” said the Rev. Kriste Gjergji, a priest at the Church of the Black Madonna.
This year was special. A devout Albanian named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu — who would later be known worldwide as Mother Teresa — spent summers in the village and the Church of the Black Madonna in her youth. The popes is slated to canonize her — making her a saint — on Sept. 4.
If she wasn’t praying in the church, she was known to roam the fields above the village and find quiet places to write poems and prayers, said the Rev. Lush Gjergj, the general vicar of Kosovo’s Roman Catholic diocese and a close friend of Mother Teresa who has written 15 books about the nun’s life.
This year, Kosovo police estimated 10,000 people traveled to Letnica for the Catholic festival. The village swelled with food vendors, souvenir kiosks and cars with license plates from as far away as Sweden.
There are about 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo, an officially secular but predominantly Muslim nation with a population of 1.8 million.
Christian and Muslim couples pray to the 400-year-old statue of the Black Madonna in the church in hopes of conceiving a child.
One Muslim from Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, Mira Hajrizi, 15, traveled to Letnica with her family to camp in the fields outside the Church of the Black Madonna for a few nights. Muslims honor the Virgin Mary, too, and she is mentioned repeatedly in the Quran.
“We pray, light candles, then we touch the dress of the Black Madonna so that we will have luck,” she said.