At Scutari, in Albania, eight Poor Clare Sisters have re-opened the doors of their convent, which had been turned into a prison during the Communist regime, “not to forget and not to repeat the same errors in future”. The convent, property of the Franciscans until 1946, was requisitioned and transformed into a prison after the abolition of the religious orders decreed by the Communist regime; that was followed by the prohibition of any kind of religious worship. The former convent then became a high security jail where key political prisoners of the regime, most of them from the intelligentsia, identified with the clergy, artists and scholars, were detained. Now the eight Poor Clares, four of them Italians and four Albanians, have returned to the convent and re-opened its doors to make public the stories of horror, persecution and torture committed within those walls. “The regime, in the space of half a century, destroyed the dignity of the human person”, said Sister Sonia, in an interview with “Antennae of Peace” of the Pope John XXIII Association – and in a country of limited size like Albania that wasn’t difficult. In 1976 State atheism was declared: man was reduced to a larva, his sole preoccupation was to eat, nothing more”. In the former convent converted into a prison four rooms were allocated to interrogations. In each of them a stool was fixed to the floor close to the wall; the prisoner was manacled to it and tortured with electric shocks. The cells of the Franciscan friars became prison cells; each of them contained up to fifteen inmates. Crosses, crescents and symbols of the various faiths are still scratched in their walls. Amplifiers in the courtyard produced high-volume sounds to cover the cries of the tortured. Each year the Sisters celebrate the Via Crucis in Lent by passing the cells and traversing the courtyard, to keep alive the memory of those who suffered here. Some survivors have returned to the convent and left written testimony of their ordeals. The persecutors too have returned, and have also told their story in writing: “If I did not want to die, and did not want any harm to be done to my family, I had to say yes”. Today, in reconciliation, victims and persecutors meet together in Church.
