The Cei delegation (National service for the youth pastoral and Office for cooperation between the Churches) and Centro Giovanni Paolo II of Loreto, on an official visit to the Balkans to promote the ‘Agora of the youth in the Mediterranean’", arrived in Tirana this morning. "We want to urge the communities that we will meet to create a network of young people in the area and make the Agora of the youth of the Mediterranean a real opportunity for exchanges and pastoral revival in their actual worlds", explains father Francesco Pierpaoli from Centro Giovanni Paolo II. "The Catholic Church invests lots of resources in the youth pastoral", tells father Patrizio Santinelli, a priest fidei donum in Albania since 1999, who since 2004 has been in Bathore, in the suburbs of Kamza, near the capital of Albania. "Many activities, such as meetings and retreats, are offered to the young, as in Italy".” “A survivor of a "very personal and cruel regime, that has slowly distanced itself from other forms of Communism, like the Russian or Chinese ones, considering them too moderate", faith in Albania is "still traditional, associated with devotional expressions, which has trouble coming out into the open". But the young "are also culturally changing at a quick pace, with the spreading of western models and customs", which also lead "to increasing laicisation".” ” ” “
