Roman Catholic Church in Albania

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St. Paul's Cathedral in Tirana

The Catholic Church in Albania is a diaspora church with an old tradition. It consists of two church provinces with a total of six independent jurisdictions. According to the 2011 census, there are 280,921 Albanian Catholics in Albania , which is 10.03 percent of the population.

The traditional settlement area of ​​the Catholics includes the north and northwest of the country. These include the archbishopric of Shkodra , the Zadrima plain with the bishopric of Vau-Deja , the city of Lezha and the sparsely populated mountain areas of the Mirdita and Malësia e Madhe in the northern Albanian Alps . Due to the internal migration that began after the political change in 1990, many Catholics came to central Albania, especially the capital Tirana. There their number is steadily increasing.

organization

Episcopal See

Albania and the Apostolic See have diplomatic relations. Archbishop Charles Brown has been Apostolic Nuncio to Albania since March 2017 ; he is based in Tirana .

Since the religious communities were re-admitted after the fall of communism in 1990, Albania has been a mission country for the Catholic Church. More than half of the priests and religious working in the country still come from abroad today (2013). The same is true of the bishops. With the help of Rome and other particular churches, functional structures (ordinariates, the parish network, church schools, a seminary, etc.) have been created.

The Albanian Caritas was founded in 1990 for social activities and officially recognized by the state as an NGO in 1993 . In the meantime, each diocese has its own diocesan association.

Dioceses by ecclesiastical province

history

From antiquity to the great schism of 1054

Albania lies at the interface between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. This has decisively shaped the church history of the country.

Early Christian mosaic in the chapel in the amphitheater of Dyrrachium

According to tradition, the first Christian community in Illyria came into being through the mission of the Apostle Paul in Dyrrachium . But it wasn't until the 4th century that there was some definite news about the spread of Christianity in what is now Albania. At that time the Christian faith was already the Roman state religion. The state provinces were largely congruent with the districts of the archbishops. The Metropolitans of Nicopolis ( Epirus vetus ), Dyrrachium ( Epirus nova ) and Scodra ( Praevalitana ) were responsible for southern Illyria . All three were under the Roman patriarchate. Politically, however, they belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire since the division of the empire in 395. As a result, there were repeated disputes between the Eastern Roman emperors and the popes about rule over the Illyrian churches.

In 535, Emperor Justinian founded Justiniana Prima, an archdiocese for the Roman province of Moesia superior (Upper Moesia ), to which he also subordinated the province of Praevalitana with the bishopric in Scodra. The Illyrian dioceses remained true to the Roman patriarchate and the loss of many Balkan provinces by the Slav invasions did the rest that the dispute between Rome and Constantinople remained undecided for the time being. In 731, however, the iconoclastic -minded Emperor Leo III. the metropolis of Durrës of Rome and subordinated it to the Patriarch of Constantinople. There is no news from the north about the church situation at this time. It is possible that the bishopric of Scodra perished during the conquest by the pagan Slavs.

In the north of what is now Albania, the small dioceses of Sarda , Pult and Sapa emerged in the 9th and 10th centuries . Shkodra also had a bishop again at this time. In 1034 these bishoprics were subordinated to the diocese of Bar , which the Pope had elevated to the status of a metropolis .

In the middle ages

The great schism of 1054 only gradually had an impact in Albania. For a long time, churches and dioceses changed obedience depending on the political situation, without there being competing hierarchies of the Eastern and Western Churches in one and the same region. In the north, however, the Roman influence has been solidifying since the 12th century, to which the Benedictine monasteries founded in the area of ​​the metropolis of Bar contributed significantly. The unity of the Archdiocese of Durrës was retained for the time being, here the Byzantine influence remained decisive. The final separation with parallel hierarchies did not take place until the 13th century. In the south, the eastern church remained unchallenged. Only in Butrint there were Latin clerics as a result of belonging to the Kingdom of Naples and later to the Republic of Venice .

The Franciscan order built its first Albanian monastery in Lezha in 1240. In 1278 the Dominicans founded their first monastery on Albanian soil in Durrës; In 1345 and 1450 they also settled in Shkodra and Lezha. The first written message about the important Abbey of St. Alexander (alb. Shën Llezhdër ) in Orosh ( Mirdita ) dates from 1319. The Benedictine monastery is probably much older. In the Mirdita there was also a Catholic diocese of the Arbër . Individual bishops have been documented since the 12th century. Arbër is an ancient name for Albanians . In the Middle Ages, it referred to the inhabitants of Arbanon , a small principality that arose around the castle of Kruja at the end of the 12th century . Presumably, the Catholic diocese was created by splitting off from the diocese of Kruja, which adhered to the Orthodox Church.

Catholicism survived the short-lived rule of the Serbian Tsar Stefan Dušan over northern Albania (1342-1355) unscathed. When the Serbian Empire fell apart with the death of the Tsar, members of the noble Ballsha family conquered power in the Zeta and northern Albania. The Ballsha converted from Orthodoxy to the Roman Catholic Church in 1368. The foundation of the diocese of Lezha also fell at this time .

In the 15th century the Holy See had close ties with the Albanian Church and the Catholic nobility. There was a common interest in preventing the Muslim Turks from advancing further into the Balkans. Cardinal Pal Engjëlli , Archbishop of Durrës, tried on several diplomatic missions to obtain military and financial support for Prince Skanderbeg in Italy . Culturally, the Albanian Catholics of that time were also strongly influenced by the Italian model. The first echoes of humanism came to an abrupt end in Albania with the Ottoman conquest. Thus creating Marin Barleti its major historiographical works for the Italian exile.

Ottoman domination

After Skanderbeg's death , it was barely a decade before the Ottomans had conquered the Catholic north of Albania. In 1479 the Republic of Venice made peace with the Sultan and ceded Shkodra and Lezha to the Ottoman Empire. In 1501 the Archbishopric of Durrës also became Turkish. Most Catholic Albanians now nominally lived under Muslim rule. At first the Turks could only really enforce their rule in the towns on the coast. The tribal areas of Mirdita , Dukagjin and Malësia e Madhe remained largely inaccessible to them. There, Catholicism was unchallenged by Muslim proselytizing. In those regions, several major Christian uprisings against the Ottomans formed in the late 15th and first half of the 16th centuries.

The successful self-assertion in the mountainous hinterland was of course only one side of the history of Albanian Catholicism during the Turkish period. It was also characterized by the gradual decline of church institutions and the cultural decline of the part of the population who remained Catholic. One of the main reasons for this was the steady emigration of Catholics to Italy and the Venetian Dalmatia. After every unsuccessful uprising, there was a particularly strong wave of Christian emigration. The Venetians and the kings of Naples gladly took the battle-hardened Albanians into their service as so-called stratiotes . Few of the young men who were sent to Italy to study theology (there was no seminary in Albania) returned. In the course of the sixteenth century, the shortage of well-trained priests, who were the only educated Catholic elite, became increasingly serious. At the same time, contacts between the Albanian bishops with the Italian Church and the Holy See became increasingly difficult and rare. All this led to the fact that Albanian Catholicism was hardly affected by the reforms of the Council of Trent and also hardly otherwise by the European intellectual life of the time. When Bar, the last Albanian bishopric, was conquered by the Turks in 1571, this isolation from the West intensified.

In the cities that were firmly in the hands of the Ottoman administration, the gradual Islamization began at the beginning of the 16th century. The most important churches were converted into mosques and served as places of prayer for the initially small groups of Muslim immigrants (soldiers, civil servants, merchants and not to forget the timariots of the surrounding lands). This was the case, for example, with the cathedrals in Shkodra and in Bar . Some of the old elites (merchants, large landowners) quickly converted to Islam in order to secure their social position d. H. in order not to fall into the status of a dhimmi (under orders) according to the Islamic code of law ( Sharia ). The Islamization of the cities was also favored by the enormous demographic upheavals that had their cause in the wars of the 15th century. In Shkodra, Lezha, Durrës or Bar, only a fraction of the long-established Christian population remained after the Turkish conquest. Large parts of the Christian population were deported to the Ottoman Empire as slaves . The repopulation was mainly carried out by Muslims. Nonetheless, there were notable Christian communities in the cities throughout the Turkish period.

Unlike for the tribes in the mountains, which often were in the running battle with the Turkish authorities, but no more than a tribute to the Sandzak paid -Bey, it was for the Christians in the cities of great importance, what legal status they had among the Muslims. In principle, Christians were tolerated as dhimmi within the Muslim legal system, but they had to pay a special tax ( jizya ). The Catholics, however, were excluded from the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire , which granted non-Muslims limited autonomy. This meant that the Catholic Albanians had hardly any legal possibilities for self-organization and their legal situation was therefore always less secure than that of the Orthodox or the Jews . Only the Franciscans enjoyed a certain recognition among the Ottomans, which is why this order, which had been active in the Balkans for centuries in Albania as well as in Bosnia, was the most important pillar of Catholicism and provided a large part of the pastors.

Beginning in 1569, various Christian powers concluded so-called capitulations with the Sultan (first France, later also the Habsburgs). Through these agreements, which primarily concerned trade relations, some improvements were also achieved for the Catholics under Ottoman rule. So z. B. Catholic priests come into the country from the west. The surrender unilaterally lifted the surrender when relations with the Christian power concerned deteriorated and they were often disregarded by the local Muslim authorities at all, so that the Albanian Catholics got only limited benefit. Nevertheless, thanks to the surrenders, some of the bishops appointed for Albanian dioceses were able to come to their diocese.

At the same time it was hardly possible to maintain an orderly diocesan administration. Because of the restrictions imposed by the Ottoman administration, many bishops could not exercise their office publicly. Foreigners who had been appointed by the popes as chief shepherds of an Albanian diocese were often only able to visit their dioceses briefly or did not even get into the country. The small dioceses of Sarda, Deja, Ulqin and Arbër perished in the 16th or 17th centuries. Other episcopal seats, such as those of Lezha and Pult, remained vacant for decades. The episcopal residence of the Diocese of Lezha had been moved from the Muslim-dominated city to a still Catholic village.

In order to remedy the spiritual hardship of their Catholic compatriots and to make the work of simple priests easier, some Albanian clergy created translations of spiritual works known at the time. All these clergymen had been trained in Italy. Her works are the earliest evidence of Albanian literature . The first of these authors was the priest Gjon Buzuku, who worked near Venice . At the time of the Council of Trent (1542–1563) he translated the Roman Missal into his mother tongue. Due to the changed policy of the Curia, which was suspicious of native-speaking liturgical texts and which therefore enforced Latin as the sole language of worship everywhere , the Albanian missal was not distributed and disappeared in the libraries. Today only a printed copy has survived.

It took more than five decades before Pjetër Budi had his Doktrina e Kërshtenë (German Christian teaching) printed in Rome in 1618 . The book was the translation of the popular catechism Christianae doctrinae explicatio by Robert Bellarmine . Budi added 50 pages of religious poetry to the book, some of which were translations of Latin verses, some of which were Albanian poetry. Frang Bardhi , Bishop of Sapa, created the first Latin-Albanian dictionary (original title: Dictionarium latino-epiroticum ). It was printed in 1635 and was intended to help Albanian clergy study Latin.

Catholic from Shkodra; Photography by Kolë Idromeno (1860–1939)

Bardhi's work as an author and as a bishop was supported by the papal congregation De Propaganda Fide , founded in 1622 . The agency should promote Catholic missions worldwide. In Albania she found an interesting field of activity, because in the Ottoman fringe province there was already a Catholic population group who gladly accepted support from Rome and - at least that was the strategic planning - could become the starting point for further missionary efforts in the Turkish-Muslim sphere of influence. The Congregation for Propaganda tried to bring missionaries into the country, it collected information about the situation of Christians and the political situation in Albania and it financed young Albanian men to study theology in Italy. Most of them attended the Illyrian seminary in Loreto near Ancona, where many Dalmatian and Bosnian clerics were trained.

In 1703 there was a provincial synod of the ecclesiastical province. Held a bar attended by all Albanian bishops and numerous clergymen. It is therefore also referred to in historiography as the Albanian National Council . The church assembly took place at a time when the Islamization of the Albanians was reaching its peak. The Catholic forces in the country itself but also the Roman Curia increased their efforts to consolidate the Albanian Church. As the visitation reports from the first half of the 18th century show, they were quite successful. Only in isolated cases did whole villages convert to Islam, and new parishes were set up in the dioceses of Shkodra, Lezha and Sappa in order to better serve the growing Catholic population.

Since the 19th century

Madonna of Vlora. In the cavity of the statue, which was in the apartment of three religious sisters, the hosts consecrated in secret were hidden during the ban on religion . In 1991 the Holy of Holies was solemnly transferred to the tabernacle of the reopened Catholic Church of Vlora , where the statue of Mary is also placed.

When the power of the Ottoman Empire declined noticeably in the 19th century and the great European powers took more and more influence on the domestic politics of the Sublime Porte, the situation of the Catholics in Albania slowly improved. Just as the Russian tsar saw himself as the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, so the Emperor of Austria claimed the protectorate over the Catholics. As in the days of the Venetian rule over Dalmatia, Albanian candidates for priesthood were allowed to study in the episcopal seminaries in Split and elsewhere.

In 1841 the Jesuits were able to open their first Albanian settlement in Shkodra.

The Archdiocese of Shkodra was established in 1867. This created an ecclesiastical province primarily inhabited by Albanians. The Archdiocese of Durrës was renamed Durrës-Tirana in 1922 and Catholics began to establish a presence in the fast-growing new state capital. In and in Elbasan around 1895, as in the 17th century in the region of Himara , some Orthodox people changed to Catholicism, but they kept the Byzantine rite . Her Albanian Greek Catholic Church and the continued promotion of Catholicism in Southern Albania were reasons for the establishment of the Apostolic Administratur Southern Albania in 1939.

In communist times , the Catholic Church suffered particularly from the persecution of religious communities because its members were assumed to be agents of the Pope and thus of Western imperialism. The cross-border hierarchical structures customary in the Catholic Church (up to the Holy See in Rome) were particularly hated by the isolationist communists of Albania. When the total ban on religion was issued in 1967, the communists put all priests and religious in prisons and labor camps. Most of the clergy died in custody, and only a few were released before the regime fell. At the turn of 1990, barely two dozen priests had survived Albanian communism.

Because Albanian Catholicism was completely isolated from the universal Church after 1945, the reforms of the 2nd Vatican Council could not be accepted. Therefore, many Catholics cling to pre-conciliar traditions and beliefs, some of which were preserved and passed on in families during the time of the total ban on religion.

In 1993 Pope John Paul II visited Albania for the first time. In 1996 the church structures in the country were changed. The diocese borders were redrawn and the new diocese of Rrëshen was established in the north. Like Lezha and Sapa , it is subordinate to the Archbishop of Shkodra. It is questionable whether the dioceses of today meet modern pastoral requirements. Presumably the small dioceses in the north were retained mainly out of respect for tradition. There is a lack of both money and qualified clergy and laypeople who could set up functioning diocesan administrations. After the union of Pult with the Archdiocese of Shkodra, the Holy See and the Albanian Episcopate decided to keep the other small dioceses. At the end of 2005, Pope Benedict XVI appointed new bishops for Rrëshen and Sapa. In September 2014 Pope Francis visited Tirana.

In November 2016, Francis appointed Ernest Simoni , a former Franciscan , a cardinal who had spent decades in prison. Thirty-eight martyrs who died persecuted by the communist regime were also beatified in November 2016. Two months earlier, Mother Teresa  was canonized by the Pope in Rome .

Pilgrimage sites

The most important place of pilgrimage for the Albanian Catholics is one dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua ( Gegisch : Shën Ndo) consecrated grotto near Laç . This pilgrimage site is not only visited by Catholics, but also by members of the other religions traditionally represented in Albania.

See also

literature

  • Concilium Provinciale sive Nationale Albanum habitum Anno MDCCIII. Clemente XI. pont. Max. Albano. Rome 1706.
  • Fulvio Cordignano: Geografia ecclesiastica dell'Albania. Dagli ultimi decenni del secolo XVI alla metà del secolo XVII. In: Orientalia Christiana Periodica 36 (1934), pp. 229-294.
  • Gjush Sheldija: Kryeipeshkvia Metropolitane e Shkodrës dhe Dioqezat Sufragane. Shënime historike. (Manuscript). Shkodra 1957/58 online (PDF; 551 kB).
  • Charles A. Frazee: Catholics and Sultans. The church and the Ottoman Empire 1453-1923. Cambridge University Press, London 1983, ISBN 0-521-24676-8 , pp. 239-241.
  • Persecution of Catholics in Albania . In: Albanian Catholic Bulletin 7/8 (1986/87). Booklet online
  • Martirizimi i Kishës Katolike Shqiptare 1944–1990. Tirana 1993.
  • Tadeusz Czekalski: Zarys dziejów chrześcijaństwa albańskiego w latach 1912-1993. Krakow 1996. ISBN 83-85527-40-0
  • Zef Simoni : Portrete Klerikësh Katolikë. Shkodra 1998.
  • Markus WE Peters: History of the Catholic Church in Albania 1919–1993 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-447-04784-4 ( PDF -; originally published in 2001 in Bonn as a dissertation under the title History of the Catholic Church in Albania from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919/20 to the pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II in 1993. ).
  • Ines A. Murzaku: Catholicism, Culture, Conversion. The History of the Jesuits in Albania (1841-1946). (= Orientalia Christiana analecta 277). Rome 2006. ISBN 978-88-7210-352-4 .
  • Engelbert Deusch: The k. (U.) K. Cultural protectorate in the Albanian settlement area in its cultural, political and economic environment. Böhlau, Vienna 2009. ISBN 978-3-205-78150-9 .

Web links

Commons : Roman Catholic Church in Albania  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Instat (Ed.): Population and Housing Census in Albania 2011: Main Results (Part 1) . Tirana December 2012 ( online version (PDF) [accessed December 28, 2014]). Online version (PDF) ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.instat.gov.al
  2. ↑ See also the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania .
  3. ↑ The greater number of Catholics is due to the generally strong population growth. Compare with Peter Bartl: The Church Conditions in Turkish Albania. Full text (PDF; 93 kB).