N.Y. building won’t honor Mother Teresa

NEW YORK – When the Empire State Building lights up, reaching 102 stories into the Manhattan sky, people lift their eyes and guess what that night’s colors might mean – a holiday, a charitable cause, maybe a Yankees win or a birthday.

But sometimes, color turns to controversy.

Tens of thousands of people are in an uproar about the building owner’s refusal to light New York’s tallest skyscraper in blue and white to honor Mother Teresa in August on what would be her 100th birthday.

“The Empire State Building celebrates many cultures and causes in the world community with iconic lightings, and has a tradition of lightings for the religious holidays of Easter, Eid al Fitr (marking the end of Ramadan), Hanukkah, and Christmas,” owner Anthony E. Malkin said in a statement Wednesday.

But the real estate mogul said the privately owned building “has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations.”

The lay advocacy group Catholic League, which requested the lights for Mother Teresa, countered that individual religious figures have, in fact, been posthumously honored at the Empire State Building: Cardinal John O’Connor in 2000, with the red and white colors of his position; Pope John Paul II in 2005, with the tower lights symbolically extinguished; and famed Baptist preacher Martin Luther King Jr. with red, black and green.

The League first asked for the lights in February and was denied.

Anyone can apply to have the building illuminated for what’s dear to them. But the privately owned landmark considers selection “a privilege, not an entitlement,” according to the website with the application form.

Applications are evaluated by the Empire State Building Co., which says online that decisions are made “at the sole discretion of the ownership and management.”

More than 40,000 people have signed a petition in support of the special lights for Mother Teresa.

On Wednesday afternoon, New York City Council members voiced their disagreement with what they see as a snub of the ethnic Albanian nun who worked for the poor and the sick while living in India. She died in 1997 and was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church – a step toward possible sainthood.

“I just think it’s a really wrong-headed decision that (Malkin) has made,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said.

“I don’t think this is about religion,” Quinn said. “Mother Teresa was a nun, obviously, but she was much more than that; she was a Nobel Prize winner … who inspired people of all religions.”

League President Bill Donohue said Malkin’s policy “is being made up on the run,” but the building owner is “not going to get away with it.”

The League is applying for a permit to protest at the foot of the Empire State Building on Aug. 26, Mother Teresa’s birthday, hoping to fill West 34th Street from Fifth to Sixth avenues.