Empire State Building owner cites policy in saying no lights for Mother Teresa
By APWednesday, June 9, 2010
Empire State Building: No lights for Mother Teresa
NEW YORK — The Empire State Building’s owner says he won’t light the landmark skyscraper for Mother Teresa because of a policy against honoring individual religious figures.
Anthony Malkin’s statement Wednesday comes amid an uproar over the decision not to illuminate the building in blue and white lights in August on what would have been the late Nobel Prize winner’s 100th birthday.
A lay group, the Catholic League, made the request in February and was denied. The league says individual religious figures have, in fact, received the honor. It says the building’s lights were illuminated after Cardinal John O’Connor died in 2000 and extinguished after Pope John Paul II died in 2005.
On Wednesday afternoon, City Council members planned to discuss what they called a snub of the revered nun who worked for the poor and the sick.
