Martyred Catholics of Albania under Communism

                             






After his arrest for being a Catholic priest, Father Lazër Shantoja was tortured so severely, his legs and arms were broken and his body ravaged with blows until his execution with a shotgun blast, on February 19, 1945, in Tirana, Albania.

The priest was one of the first to suffer persecution before the Communists had even taken control of the Albanian government, and his execution had been ordered by sadistic Enver Halil Hoxha.

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"If you see my family one day, tell them that I'm innocent and die for my faith in Christ," said Father Anton Muzaj, who had been arrested, in October 1947, in the Communist-led Albania, because he was a Catholic priest.

In prison, he was endlessly tortured, forced to stand for days and nights, with his hands and legs tied together and his nose against a wall. When he could no longer stand, he was severely beaten by the sadistic guards.

Unable to move, he was forced to lie in an icy draft, developed tuberculosis and died soon thereafter as a result of all the torture he had received, in the spring of 1948, in Shkodra.

VIVA CRISTO REY!

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Father Zef "Bernardin" Palaj was arrested by the Albanian government, headed by the Communist Party with its theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.

Brutally tortured in prison, the freedom-loving priest died on December 2, 1946, in Shkodra, after he had been hanged from a wire and contracted tetanus.

VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET!

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Father Ejëll Deda was arrested on November 12, 1947, after the Albanian government was taken over by the revolutionary Communist Party with its theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.

Imprisoned in nightmarish conditions, he died on May 12, 1948, "in odium fidei," for hatred of the Faith.

VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET!
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Accused of being a secret agent sent by the Vatican, Archbishop Jul Bonati was arrested by the Albanian Communist regime's secret police.

During his trial, the archbishop of Durres said, “Our goal as religious men is to unite people in brotherhoods around the world. Catholicism’s enemy is the mistake, not the guilty; therefore, its enemy is Communism, not the Communists.”

Sentenced to the Psychiatric Hospital of Durres, the scholar and intellectual was tortured physically, mentally and emotionally until his death,killed by mentally deranged patients, on November 5, 1951.

VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET!


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Father Ndoc Suma was celebrating Mass, on December 8, 1946, when he was arrested by the secret police of the Albanian government, ruled by the revolutionary Communist Party with its theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.

Tried on false counterrevolutionary charges, he was sentenced to 30 years hard labor.

While in prison, he suffered in silence, even when he received a paralyzing injury. Unable to labor for the State, authorities ejected him from the prison, and he died shortly after, on April 22, 1958.

VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET!



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Catholics suffered great persecution in Albania, the first atheist State, led by the Communist Party with its theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.

Catholicism and its practice was outlawed and considered a counterrevolutionary crime against the revolutionary State.

For being a practising Catholic priest who secretly administered the Sacraments to the Faithful, Father Shtjefën Kurti was arrested several times, accused of crimes against the State.

When someone reported to authorities that he had secretly baptized a child, upon the mother's request, he was arrested a final time.

After a trial, during which he admitted baptizing the child, Father Kurti was led to the firing squad, where he was executed, on October 20, 1971.

VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET!

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