Paul Alkazraji's Blog - Posts Tagged "zef-pllumi"

Communist monument in southern Albania.

By Paul Alkazraji in Albania (Sunday, September 21st, 2014).

Along the Boulevard of National Martyrs in Albania’s capital Tirana photos of the priests and nuns who fell victim to the country’s violent Communist persecutions were draped in remembrance before Pope Francis and the tens of thousands gathered on Sunday for the Mass and his homily.

In addition to the key themes of encouraging Albania’s young to build their lives in Christ, and fostering peaceful co-existence between the different religious communities, he drew attention to how the country had “suffered so much because of a terrible atheist regime”.

“Albania sadly witnessed the violence and tragedy that can be caused by a forced exclusion of God from personal and communal life,” he said. “When, in the name of an ideology, there is an attempt to remove God from a society, it ends up adoring idols, and very soon people lose their way, their dignity trampled and rights violated.”

After their rise to power near the end of WWII, the Communists decreed that the activities of all religious communities be supervised by the state. It was after Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in 1966 spawned a similar movement in Albania, however, that the church faced its darkest hour.

Student agitators roamed the countryside forcing people to renounce their faith. The remnants of the fledgling Protestant church was driven further underground. Catholic and Orthodox priests were interned and over a hundred and twenty died through the harsh conditions, torture or execution. Outside a cemetery in the northern city of Shkoder many were shot by firing squad. Around 2000 churches and mosques were destroyed or converted into warehouses or gymnasiums. To achieve ‘the world’s first atheist state’ faith communities were obliterated.

Of those that survived to tell their stories the Franciscan Zef Pllumi emerged as an articulate voice through his book, ‘Live to Tell’, an account of his cruel treatment in internment camps. Often called the Albanian ‘Gulag Archipelago’ due to its similarities to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s work, some find it difficult to even endure reading its narrative of suffering.

On that morning of Pope Francis’ visit, as I drove with the leaders of a new village church-plant close to the site of one of the places Zef Pllumi was imprisoned, at the Orman-Pojanit camp near Maliq, one told me a further story. It was of a priest who had been beaten about the head and buried alive there.

A second-century Church Father wrote those well-known words ‘the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church’. Close to the periphery of that camp site, there are now two flourishing churches filled with happy, worshipping communities every Sunday, with a third also growing. At one, in a village, twenty new believers were baptised this summer. May it delight that priest in heaven to know it.

One of the new believers, a man in his seventies who lived through those times, waded out into the lake for his baptism with abandon in his long-johns, and speaks of how he could not imagine that his life would change so much at this stage. “I sleep much better. My heart is filled with the love of God, and praying all the time gives me new strength,” he says.

From Mother Teresa Square down the Boulevard of National Martyrs Pope Francis spoke the final words of his homily. “To the Church which is alive in this land of Albania, I say “thank you” for the example of fidelity to the Gospel! So many of your sons and daughters have suffered for Christ, even to the point of sacrificing their lives. May their witness sustain your steps today and tomorrow as you journey along the way of love, of freedom, of justice and of peace.”

End.

Radio interview on United Christian Broadcasters for the Paul Hammond Show about Albania and the Pope's visit (23/9/14): http://www.mixcloud.com/Muthena/pope-...

By this writer: The Silencer

The remnants of the Albanian protestant church discovered in 1991

(From Chapter 4 ‘Midnight by the railway tracks’, Christ and the Kalashnikov.)

Later that afternoon, as we hovered around the hotel lobby anxiously biding our time, I sensed that there were many others in the building watching us. At quarter to four, I glanced around at the team. It was time to step out, and my stomach seemed to rise like when speeding in a car across a humpbacked bridge. Together we walked through the glass entrance doors and around to the park at the rear. The security officer scurried quickly after us. As we crossed the grass my heart sank; there were little more than around thirty people ahead, casting their eyes around uneasily, and I couldn’t see Sokoli. I wondered if what we were going to try was led by the Holy Spirit or just foolhardy. We quickly set up a sketchboard to paint a visual message, and the YWAM team began to perform a short drama. It was then that I noticed something. All around the edge of the park, people were watching at a distance. As the presentation continued they began to edge timidly forwards, glancing at each other and us. As the drama drew to a close, we were surrounded by literally hundreds.

The moment in the programme had arrived to preach a short message, and yet no one spoke Albanian fluently enough to do it. I glanced around anxiously, grasping my Bible, and then began in English. Suddenly, a young man with curly, brown hair stepped forwards from the crowd. “My name is Ardian,” he said quickly, “I will translate for you.” As I continued to speak, Ardian relayed the message confidently to the crowd. My pulse was racing. I was amazed and I thanked God under my breath. I now watched the faces of those close in front of us as they stood jostling and craning their necks for a better view. As I spoke, I had never witnessed a crowd polarise so visibly to what they were hearing: an ageing woman in a black headscarf whose eyes narrowed as she pulled away; a teenage boy with a half-grown moustache whose mouth began to widen like a fish. It was as if a light was shining so clearly in the park that there were no grey areas, just highlight and shadow across the people’s faces. When Ardian finished translating, he concluded as if his heart had made its own choice as he’d stood there: “I know this message is true, because it was so for me,” he declared. I stepped back up onto the edge of a small, stone platform. By now the crowd had spread back across the grass. People were climbing up trees and standing on the tops of park benches, and around the edges of the grass were dozens of soldiers who had been listening in to the talk. Suddenly, shouting broke out at the rear of the crowd and people began to scatter across the grass. Four police cars had braked in the road, and the officers appeared to be arguing amongst themselves as well as trying to break through the people. The soldiers, however, were crowding up to them red-faced and pushing them back, waving their arms in the air. I looked back down at the team. It seemed like the right moment to leave. We packed up the equipment we had brought, and mingled in with the crowds as the park began to empty rapidly.

Back at the hotel, we were floating but afraid. No one could quite believe the response that we’d had, and how Ardian, whom I now remembered meeting briefly in Thessaloniki, had stepped forward publicly at great risk to himself. One black mark in your biography file could mean interrogations or worse, and the Sigurimi were always watching. Our brown-suited spy had seen it all, and we knew he’d make his reports. We held our breath and waited for the ensuing consequences throughout the evening.

A soft tapping came on the door of my hotel room at around midnight. My roommate looked anxiously across. I pulled on my shoes, and moments later turned the key in the lock. I opened the door cautiously. Outside in the corridor stood an old man with dark, bushy eyebrows and a warm expression. He held out his hand. “I am Ligor Çina, a member of the church in Korçë,” he whispered. He beckoned for us to follow him. I felt a little apprehensive, but at peace somehow that the man’s introduction was genuine. We locked the room and followed a couple of paces behind him down the silent hotel corridor.

Just five minutes walk from the entrance of the Hotel Iliria, we entered a small stone cottage, ducking to avoid the lintel. The interior was dimly lit and smelt a little of feet. Ligor gestured us through a further doorway where another elderly man with dark, sparking eyes sat regally on a wooden chair, his face half-lit by a single light bulb. A candle was flickering on the window ledge. Ligor introduced the man as ‘Koci Treska’. I stepped forwards and shook his hand. After we had sat across from him, he wasted no time in addressing us, and I waited for my roommate to translate. As I watched him talk, his manner seemed formal, yet I could see tears in his eyes. He brushed his cheek intermittently with his hand. Despite his frail physique, the man possessed a noticeable inner strength. I could feel my own tears welling up before I knew what he was saying. Shortly, my roommate turned to look at me.
“He says that he, Ligor and a handful of others are the only remaining members of a church stared before the outbreak of the Second World War… by two American missionaries, Kennedy and Jaques… They were the youth group,” he said, pausing whilst he too now steadied his voice. “He says that they have kept their faith secretly for over fifty years, and word reached him today that the Gospel had been preached on the streets of his town for the first time since the Communists took control. He wanted to meet us and to thank us. He has been praying for this day for years. He says that he is ready now to die with contentment.” I too now brushed my cheek. He reached forwards and for a couple of seconds we clasped hands. My roommate continued: “He says that we should go now, but he hopes that we will return here.” I was overcome – a lifetime of covert belief, and we were his first confidants. Koci now gestured towards the door. The meeting was over. As we stood up to leave, Ligor stepped ahead of us. Outside the cottage, he looked both ways. We shook hands firmly, and we scurried away along the dark, side street.

Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Christ and the Kalashnikov, Marshall Pickering. 2001. All Rights Reserved.

By this writer: Christ and the Kalashnikov