Albanian Priests -- Horrific and Not So Long Ago

An even more brutal fate awaited Father Nikoll Gazulli, a pastor in the Shkodra archdiocese. Father Gazulli fled but was tricked into returning to administer extreme unction to a dying villager. Betrayed, he was shot in the back, though not killed. As an object lesson, he was hung, still alive, in front of the village church for several days.

Many lay people were also tortured for failing to denounce the “crimes” of the clergy (whole parishes of Albanian Catholics asked to be arrested in place of their priests and met to say the rosary in the priest’s absence). Maria Shalaku, from Kosovo, was pronounced too depraved for quick execution: she was condemned to “be slowly burned alive to ashes.”

In the prisons camps, the slow torture took many forms. Jan Gardin, a Jesuit survivor, recorded in his journal:

“Most of them were beaten on their bare feet with wooden clubs; the fleshy part of the legs and buttocks were cut open, rock salt inserted beneath the skin, and then sewn up again; their feet, placed in boiling water until the flesh fell off, were then rubbed with salt; their Achilles’ tendons were pierced with hot wires. Some were hung by their arms for three days without food; put in ice and icy water until nearly frozen; had electrical wires places in their ears, nose, mouth, genitals, and anus; burning pine needles placed under fingernails; forced to eat a kilo of salt and having water withheld for 24 hours; boiled eggs put in their armpits; teeth pulled without anaesthetic; tied behind vans and dragged; left in solitary confinement without food or water until almost dead; forced to drink their own urine and eat their own excrement; put in pits of excrement up to their necks; put on a bed of nails and covered with heavy material; put in nail-studded cages which were then rotated rapidly.”

But the people remained faithful. When religious services were permitted again in 1990, they immediately drew thousands. The government returned religious properties in 1991, the same year that Mother Teresa made a brief visit and opened a convent. In 1983, it compared John Paul II to Mussolini; in 1993, it honored him for defending the Albanian people for 15 years. The Albanian Church triumphed — at a high price. Of 156 priests before the persecution began, 65 were martyred, 64 died during or after imprisonment. Tens of thousands of common people perished for religious reasons. No people passed through a worse trial in the 20th century.

Pope John Paul II has said: “History has never seen before what happened in Albania. Dear Albanians, your drama must interest the whole European continent: Europe must not forget.”