Business / Workplace

In May, the Catholic League began a worldwide campaign protesting a decision by officials from the Empire State Building to deny Mother Teresa the same honor it had extended to virtually every world leader, event or holiday, namely, to shine the colors associated with the honoree from its tower on a designated night.

Early in the year, we found out that on September 5, the U.S. Postal Service would honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa by issuing a stamp with her image. On February 2, Bill Donohue submitted an application to the Empire State Building Lighting Partners requesting that the tower lights feature blue and white, the colors of Mother Teresa’s congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, on August 26. On May 5, the request was denied without explanation.

During her life, Mother Teresa received 124 awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Medal of Freedom. She built hundreds of orphanages, hospitals, hospices, health clinics, homeless shelters, youth shelters and soup kitchens all over the world, and is revered in India for her work. She created the first hospice in New York’s Greenwich Village for AIDS patients. Not surprisingly, she was voted the most admired woman in the world three years in a row in the mid-1990s. But she was not good enough to be honored by the Empire State Building.

In the Autumn of 2009, the Empire State Building shone in red and yellow lights to honor the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Communist revolution. Yet under its founder, Mao Zedong, the Communists killed 77 million people. In other words, the greatest mass murderer in history merited the same tribute being denied to Mother Teresa.

We launched a worldwide petition drive protesting this indefensible decision and gathered well over 40,000 signatures. We also petitioned Anthony Malkin, the owner of the Empire State Building, to reverse the decision and urged our members to write to him. But all requests were ignored.

Every reporter who contacted Malkin’s office was hung up on. A PR representative hired from another firm would only say that he had been instructed not to say anything. Furthermore, when reporters from CBS sought access to Malkin on May 14, security guards escorted them out of his building.

Malkin called his decision to deny the lighting “final and irrevocable.” Apropos, we called for a demonstration on August 26 outside of the Empire State Building. A decision that we said was “final and irrevocable.”

While stiffing Mother Teresa drove much of the response, lying and arrogance associated with this event were also important factors. Click here see a copy of the application that we filled out in February; see also a copy of the application that was drawn up after our protest was lodged. In other words, they simply invented a new policy regarding religious figures so as to give themselves cover.

The support we garnered was wide. Media outlets all over the world carried this story, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Liberals, conservatives, moderates—all were on board. So were people of every religious and ethnic affiliation; we were especially pleased by the strong response from Mother Teresa’s own ethnic community, the Albanians. Indeed, Malkin brought people together the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

In fact, few could believe that Malkin dug himself such a hole. While he was paying lawyers and consultants for advice, we reached out to a record number of bishops, priests, religious and lay leaders. Of special note was the warm reception we received from several bishops in India; they all had fond memories of Mother Teresa. We also gained new members at a fast pace.

In addition to holding a rally, we decided to conduct a positive PR campaign via our website: we posted the names and contact information of pro-life organizations in the New York tri-state area, urging people to make a donation in the name of Mother Teresa.

We had a lot of prominent people come to the rally. Moreover, we are pleased to note that not only did many New York buildings shine blue and white that night, but so did buildings in places ranging from Buffalo to Miami to Belfast. We encouraged everyone—no matter where they live—to wear blue and white on August 26.

August 26, 2010 will go down in American history as an important Catholic date. The rally proved to be a success, drawing over 3,000 people filling both sides of 34th street between 5th Avenue and Broadway. Seventeen notables spoke at the rally: politicians from both the Republican and Democratic Parties; celebrities, religious figures and New York icons; there were Albanians, African Americans, Indians, Irish, Italians, Jews, Latinos and others; there were Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Hindus. The diversity of the speakers proved our point: Mother Teresa transcended all demographic boundaries.