Fran Miraka

Fran Miraka (born August 13, 1916 in Puka , † March 4, 1946 in Shkodra or October 1946) was an Albanian Catholic who was shot by the communists for his faith . He is one of the Thirty-Eight Martyrs of Albania .

Life

Fran Miraka attended the Jesuit school in Shkodra and worked as a shepherd and seller. The State Security persecuted him because of his Catholic faith and probably also because a relative of his was abroad . A court in Tirana chaired by Frederik Nosi sentenced him and other witnesses to death by shooting on February 22, 1946. There are various details about his execution: he was shot in October 1946 or on March 4, 1946 with a group of clerics and lay people. In the vicinity of the Jesuit seminary in Shkodra, resistance against the new communist rulers had formed, with the so-called “Albanian Union”, young adults wanted to try to warn the population about the upcoming bogus elections. Many were sentenced to prison terms in a court case, and eight death sentences were passed : The priests Fr Giovanni Fausti SJ, Fr Daniel Dajani SJ :, Fr Gjon Shllaku OFM, the seminarians Mark Cuni and Gjergj Bici and some lay people, including Gjelosh Lulashi and probably also Fran Miraka, were sentenced to death by shooting , one of the convicts, Gjergj Bici, was later pardoned and, after being briefly released, spent the rest of his life in prison. The convicts were shot in the early morning of March 4, 1946, behind a Catholic cemetery near Shkodra, in the shade of two large trees. People ran up after the gunfire and saw the bodies that remained until the afternoon. One of the soldiers confidently told a Catholic boy who was there, “I have never seen men so brave before. They all died with the cry: 'Long live Christ!' ”When the corpses were finally buried, this was done in a mass grave that was only knee-deep and which had already contained many other executed people. On March 5, a requiem was read for those who were shot.

beatification

On November 5, 2016, together with 37 other martyrs Francisco Miraka in Shkodra beatified . The Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints , Cardinal Angelo Amato , presided over the celebrations on behalf of Pope Francis.

literature

• At Zef Pllumi: Rrno vetëm për me tregue. Shtëpie Botuese 55, Tirana 2/2006, ISBN 99943-799-8-4 .

Web links

• Portrait of Fran Miraka on the site of the Shkodra-Pult Archdiocese