Simon Jubani
Simon Jubani (born March 8, 1927 in Shkodra ; † July 12, 2011 ibid) was an Albanian Catholic priest . He was the first priest to celebrate a public service again in 1990. During the communist dictatorship he was incarcerated almost continuously from the imposition of the religious ban from 1967 to 1989.
Life
Dom Simon Jubani was born in Shkodra. In 1943, at the age of 16, he began his ecclesiastical training at the Jesuit seminary in his hometown. After the communists closed this church school, he continued his education at a state high school.
1957/58 he worked as a deacon in the Mirdita . After his ordination in May 1958, he worked there as a pastor. In 1964 he was arrested and sentenced by the political judiciary to 25 years in a labor camp. Much of the time he spent in solitary confinement in the notorious Burrel Prison because he refused to work in the mine. Jubani was also frequently tortured there. In 1988 he was paroled for the first time. But he was soon imprisoned again because he failed to keep the communist rulers' silence. He was finally released on April 13, 1989.
On November 4, 1990, Simon Jubani celebrated the first public mass in Albania in decades in the chapel of the Catholic cemetery in Shkodra. The religious ban had not yet been officially lifted and the sacred buildings, as far as they were not destroyed, were in the hands of the state. Several thousand believers took part in another mass in the cemetery on November 11th. In 1990 this service was an important milestone in the anti-communist liberation movement in Albania.
In 1991, Dom Simon was the first Albanian clergyman to be received by Pope John Paul II in Rome. During this conversation the foundations for the reconstruction of the Albanian Church were laid.
In the 1990s Dom Simon Jubani worked as a guest lecturer at various Catholic universities in Belgium, France and the USA. In Albania he worked again as a priest in Shkodra and the neighboring, formerly mostly Catholic regions.
Even after the end of communism, Dom Simon Jubani was critical of the Albanian rulers, the democrats as well as the socialists. As early as 1993 he publicly denounced the corruption of the Berisha government . He has received death threats since 1995 and armed gangs shot at his home in Shkodra.
After Sali Berisha came to power again in 2005, Jubani sharply criticized the prime minister. He made him largely responsible for the social impoverishment of large parts of the Albanian people. Berisha is complicit in the fact that 50,000 Albanian girls and women were sold into prostitution in Western Europe .
Possibly it was Jubani’s sharp political statements that prevented him from being appointed bishop in one of the Albanian dioceses. Of all the priests who had survived the communist regime of violence, he was the youngest and healthiest, and his contributions to rebuilding the Catholic Church in the early 1990s are widely recognized.
Honors
In 1991 the University of San Francisco awarded Dom Simon Jubani an honorary doctorate. The US state of Michigan recognized Jubani's commitment to freedom of the press , in particular the development of the church press , with an award in 1996.
Works
- Burgjet e mia. Kujtime. ( My captivity. Memories. ) Shkodra / Rome 2001.
Web links
- Article by Robert Delaney. In: The Michigan Catholic, May 17, 1991. (English)
- Biographical notes about Simon Jubani (until 1991) on: Dansk Europamission's og Brødremenighedens. Danske Mission's aktiviteter i Albania (in Danish)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jubani, Simon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Albanian Catholic priest |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 8, 1927 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Shkodra , Albania |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 12, 2011 |
| Place of death | Shkodra |