A land to be loved

“Ever since the Church was restored in Albania, in 1991, we have made enormous strides, given the situation from which we started out, both in terms of the spiritual situation and of the forces at our disposal. We are very happy about this revival and grateful to all those who have contributed and continue to contribute to it, but we mustn’t be complacent and rest on our laurels, because here too huge numbers of people have a hunger and thirst for words of truth, but the workers in the vineyard are still too few”, comments Archbishop ANGELO MASSAFRA of the diocese of Scutari and Pult, in describing the current situation of the Church in Albania, in particular that of his own diocese, citing the very same words he had addressed to the huge congregation in the cathedral for last Sunday’s mass. Albania has a population of over 3.5 million. The majority of the inhabitants (70%) are Muslims. But 16% of the population are now Catholics; they are subdivided into six dioceses, an apostolic administration and some 130 parishes. Pastoral care is entrusted to 6 archbishops and bishops and 52 diocesan priests. There are over 100 religious clergy. DON’T JUST STAND AND WATCH! “Don’t just stand and watch, but actively love your land, just as the martyrs loved it, namely by giving your life also for service to the priesthood!” said the bishop, appealing to the young. “The problem”, he later explained to SIR , “is the insistence of families that their children study and emigrate, with the idea that only abroad can life improve. On the contrary, the phenomenon of youth emigration only aggravates the situation with the dismemberment of families, compounded by a real lack of infrastructures and employment, which leads most young people to despise their own land”. “Undoubtedly the problems are serious, and just on this the Church has a lot to say. In my last pastoral letter, for instance, I tried to raise awareness about the problem of drug cultivation by many farmers, undoubtedly forced to do so by the life of abject poverty they lead in isolated mountains for many months of the year, and to condemn this illicit activity”. THE CHURCH HAS MUCH TO SAY to families on women’s condition, continued Archbishop Massafra. “Our parish priests educate people in the need to respect the consent of women to arranged marriages, by not giving authorization to the marriages of under-age girls. Moreover, we urge that marriages between very young girls and adult men be avoided, and condemn promises of marriage by proxy, where girls accept only to be able to travel abroad”. Another major task of the Church is also bound up with this: “The struggle against the law of vengeance, which is still very strong in Albania today: even for failure to keep a promise of marriage a person risks being killed in revenge. Thanks to the funds of the Rainbow Mission in 1999, we have been able to create the Village of Peace, here in Scutari, which provides a refuge for families which risk the execution of one of their members due to the harsh local law”. THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA . “The diocese – pointed out Archbishop Massafra – is stepping up its use of television with its channel Telepace; it also runs an audiovisual centre and structures to produce programmes on its own, for the transmission of local events, the sharing of reflections at Lent and Advent, accounts of the life of Saints and documentaries of the Edizioni Paoline (in Italian) with subtitles in Albanian. Of course the costs of this service are high, but the feedback is considerable, even among non-believers (25% in the country) who follow our transmissions with interest”. Also significant is the diocese’s commitment “to the translation of encyclicals, a huge task, given the backlog, but one that will see the launch of the first encyclical of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est , on the day commemorating Mother Teresa on 5 September”. SHARED DAILY LIFE . “All the local churches and the faithful – continued the archbishop – responded to the special prayer intention of Pope Benedict XVI for this Sunday, inviting prayers for an end to the conflict in the Middle East. Here too co-existence with the other religions is witnessing a new phase very different from the previous one, which had been characterised by the historic joint inauguration of the Village of Peace in 2003, in the struggle against the law of vengeance”. “I have been forced – added Msgr. Massafra – to issue a decree that requires the bishop to authorise the erection of large-sized religious symbols in public places, following numerous episodes of intolerance”. For its part, the diocese of Scutari “has the duty to resume the task of reconstructing the Church of St. Nicholas, demolished by the Communist regime in 1967, even if funds are limited at the present time. It is also indispensable to replace with stone-built churches the three containers in other zones of the city, where other churches destroyed by the regime had previously been located”.