Father Zef Pllumi, icon of resistance to communist regime, dies

TIRANA, Sep. 26 – Father Zef Pllumi died Tuesday at Gemelli hospital in Rome. He was 83.
Father Pllumi, not only a Catholic cleric but also a historian, writer and well known personality, died at the hospital following a heart attack.
A member of the Franciscan brothers, he has been honored with the Nation’s Honor medal from the president.
Father Pllumi had suffered since some months at the Franciscan mission in Gjuhadol village and last month he was moved to Rome to be taken care of.
He returned to Shkodra for a few days but then sent back to Gemelli hospital where he passed away at 22:30 Tuesday.
His body will be returned to Albania and the Franciscan mission will arrange the funeral.
Father Pllumi was born April 7, 1924 in Mali I Rrencit commune in northern Lezha.
He started the Franciscan college in Shkodra in 1931. His elementary and high school were followed at Ylliricum lyceum, in 1942 he enrolled in the Franciscan college in Shkodra. He had such great Albanian teachers as Father Gjergj Fishta, Father Anton Harapi, Father Gjon Shllaku. He also learned many foreign languages.
He collaborated with the Hylli I Drites (Light’s Star) magazine and served as personal secretary to Father Mati Prendushi, a top head of the Franciscan mission in Albania.
After World War II, when Albania was governed by the conquering communists, he was arrested together with a group of clerics in Dec. 14, 1946. He was charged with being secretary to Father Mati Prendushi the post of secretary. In 1948 he was sentenced by a court to three years imprisonment which he served in Shkodra, Kavaja and Maliq.
After his release, he returned to the Franciscan mission in Arra e Madhe in Shkodra. In 1958 he was transferred to Malesi e Dukagjinit where he stayed until religion was banned by the communist regime in 1967.
That year he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. The prison years he passed in the infamous Spac, in Vlora, Fier, Lezha and Saranda.
He was released in April 1989 after suffering from many illnesses.
In 1990 he came to serve in Tirana as a cleric. Religious oppression was eased in November 1990 on the brink of the collapse of the communist regime a month alter. He held his first free mass at Shna Nout church for Christmas 1990.
Since that time he became a well-known personality not only in religion but also in history and literature.
Some months ago he published in a local newspaper a study on the country’s transition period.
He has been a strong supporter of the local religious clerics attacking the foreign sects and efforts to usurp the local one. He has also been a strong critic of the ever-squabbling politics in the post-communist country.
Father Pllumi resumed publishing the Hylli I Drites magazine during 1993-1997 and then again in 2003.
Father Pllumi also became well-known in literature. He wrote an auto-biography entitled, “Live Only To Tell” in three volumes, in which he describes his suffering in Albanian prisons.
The Ministry of Culture honored him in 2006 with the Golden Hand medal just ahead of another medal, that of the Nation’s Honor given by the then-president Alfred Moisiu “as a representative of the cultural and human wealth, as a true institution who resisted difficult regimes and times and as a symbol of a free citizen, whose vision is inspired from the European values.”
In 2006 he also published another book titled, “History Never Written”. In his last interview he feared he would likely not complete another work.