Father Zef Pllumi posthumously awarded National Flag presidential order

TIRANA, Oct. 22 – Late Catholic priest and writer Father Zef Pllumi has been posthumously honoured with the highest National Flag Presidential Order for his persecution under communism and his work and life by defending the values of religion, national culture, freedom and human dignity. The award was announced during a visit President Bujar Nishani paid in the northern commune of Shengjin, the hometown of the late cleric in a ceremony coinciding with the anniversary of the beatification of Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner of Albanian origin.
“Although going through tremendous violence and persecution, his 25-year imprisonment, he came out with no hatred as a gentleman in search of the lost time for Albania rather than himself leaving his will through “Rrno per me tregue” (Live to tell),” said President Nishani.
Earlier this year, the late Catholic priest and writer was honoured with a statue in the seafront promenade of his hometown of Shengjin, in the northern Albanian district of Lezha.
Zef Pllumi (1924-2007), a Franciscan friar was born in Mali i Rencit village in Shengjin. As a twenty-year-old, he witnessed the Communist takeover and the unprecedentedly violent suppression of the Catholic Church in northern Albania. Most clergymen were arrested and many were executed. Though he suffered much abuse, Pllumi managed to survive and was ordained in 1956. He worked as a parish priest in Shosh in the mountains of Dukagjin for some twelve years until 1967, when a government edict was issued for the total abolition of religion. He was arrested at that time and spent the following twenty-three years in prisons and labour camps. His harrowing experience as a Catholic priest in Stalinist Albania is recorded in his moving, 730-page memoirs, “Rrno vet쭠p철me tregue” (I only live on to tell), Tirana 2006. Father Zef Pllumi died in Rome on 25 September 2007.