The enduring faith of long-suffering Catholics in Albania

Albanian Catholics are descendents of those who embraced the Faith in the early centuries A.D. And they held to the Faith through 400 years of Ottoman rule and, more recently, an extreme totalitarian regime that became the world’s first atheist state.

All this oppression has impacted the religious demographics. But, through crushing hardship, Catholicism endured in parts of this small Balkan nation of less than 3 million persons.

Due to the Ottoman influence, Albania is a majority-Muslim nation, though not a vast majority. About 9% of the general population is Catholic (both Roman and Eastern rites), and a slightly smaller number is Orthodox Catholic. Additionally, there are significant numbers of persons who do not follow any religion.

Albania’s strongest Catholic presence is in its northwestern region, where in some districts they comprise the largest religious group. Catholicism is far less common in the southern region.

There is just one Catholic seminary currently active in Albania, relates Fr. Gjovani Kokona, associate pastor of St. Paul Albanian Catholic Church in Rochester Hills, a suburb of Detroit. The parish is the largest Albanian church outside of the country of Albania. A native of the Albanian capital of Tirana, Fr. Gjovani has been involved with Albanian Catholic ministry in North America since 2011.

He says a “good number” of Catholic priests in Albania are ethnic Albanians, but there is still a “high number from Italy and other countries.”

Fr. Gjovani describes Catholic relations with the other religious groups in Albania as peaceful overall. However, Albanian Catholics do encounter difficulties in terms of diminished opportunity brought on by “failures to ensure fair representation in administration and government.”

This situation has led to high numbers of emigration. Fr. Gjovani estimates that about 40% of Catholic Albanians are living abroad. Additionally, there have long been Catholic Albanians living in such nearby locations as Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

Albania remains one of Europe’s poorest nations and has considerable problems with both human and drug trafficking. But it has already faced more formidable evils, the most menacing of which came as World War II’s European theater drew to a close and Eastern bloc nations began to follow the ideology of the Soviet Union.

Amid these developments, in the mid-20th century a man named Enver Hoxha (1908-1985) rose to power in Albania. His family background was mundane. He had no record of job success or any particular talent. Nor did he even have much of a history of radical politics. And yet he emerged as the leader of his small, impoverished homeland, which he turned into a Stalinist state that persisted for decades after Stalin’s death and brought almost a half-century of rumors, disappearances, and ongoing terror.

Hoxha’s totalitarian regime effectively isolated Albania from the rest of the world. Persecution of the Church was immediate and extreme. In 1967, Albania officially proclaimed itself world’s first atheist state.

Even under such circumstances, the Catholic Church in Albania managed to survive as a minority faith in a godless tyranny.

Hoxha’s death in 1985 brought some hope for Albania even though his handpicked successor immediately took over. Amid the fall of the Berlin Wall and a crumbling economy, the country was ripe for reform as the 1980s drew to a close.

A dramatic sign of progress took place on Mar. 23, 1991, when St. Mother Teresa—who came from a Kosovar Albanian family—unlocked the doors to the Sacred Heart Church in Tirana.

Albania experienced greatly enhanced freedom in the 1990s, as the full extent of its Stalinist nightmare was revealed. Tens of thousands had been sent to labor camps or other places of captivity, where many had languished for multiple decades. About 6,000 persons were executed, and more than 4,000 others remained missing.

Pope Francis visited Albania in 2014 and spoke of the “decades of atrocious suffering and terrible persecution” that had taken place during a period in the 20th century when Albania was about the most hostile place on earth toward Christianity.

Though the days of ‘atrocious suffering’ belong to a bygone era, Fr. Gjovani says the trauma of the Hoxha regime still has a strong effect on older Albanians, “in the way of thinking especially.”

The most prominent Catholic victims of that era are the 38 Albanian martyrs, consisting of both clergy and laypersons. They were beatified on November 5, 2016.

Fr. Gjovani relates that another much-admired man in Albania is Fr. Gjergj Fishta (1871-1940), a Franciscan priest and poet who helped standardize the Albanian alphabet and also inspired a cultural resurgence in his homeland.

Additionally, there is the legend called Skanderbeg, whose real name was Gjergj Kastrioti. Also known as “The Albanian Braveheart,” Skanderbeg was born in the early 1400s into an aristocratic Albanian family, but had been raised in the Ottoman court as a political hostage of sorts and forcibly converted to Islam.

Having received years of training in military combat and strategy, he became a formidable military commander on behalf of the Ottomans. But having grown disgruntled with their encroachment on Albanian territory, he abandoned the Ottomans and sought to drive them out of his homeland.

Adept at forming alliances with local chieftains, Skanderbeg—who converted to Catholicism—also obtained financial support from Pope Calixtus III and the Kingdom of Naples. He saw a number of military victories and was a real thorn in the Ottoman side. But about a dozen years after his death in 1468, the Ottomans took over the longtime Albanian Catholic stronghold of Shkodër.

Skanderbeg’s valiant fight was remembered fondly. And its implications extended far beyond Albania as, for a quarter of a century, he helped disrupt the Ottoman momentum that was menacing much of Christian Europe. There even remains a small statue in London praising him as “the Defender of Western Civilisation.”

Skanderbeg is generally viewed not just as an Albanian Catholic hero but as an Albanian national hero. In fact, the center of the capital city is called Skanderbeg Square.

For centuries he was well known across Europe, but now his notoriety is largely restricted to his homeland. This diminished legacy is likely because the Ottomans are no longer a threat to Europe, and the preservation of Christianity is no longer as relevant within Europe.

On that note, Fr. Gjovani says “there are signs” of secularization and decline of faith among Albanian Catholics, but “not yet to the level of Western countries.”