Pope Francis says Albania visit will serve to show the world how religions can live in harmony

TIRANA, Aug. 21 – Pope Francis, who is to visit Albania on Sept. 21, said this week his primary motivation for the visit is to promote Albania as an example to the world that religious harmony works.
“They have been able to have a government — and let’s think here about the Balkans — a government of unity with Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics — with an interfaith council that helps a lot. This is great and brings harmony,” Pope Francis said in a press conference aboard the plane bringing him back to Rome from a visit to South Korea.
He added, “I think the presence of the Pope serves to tell all the people that it can me done, they can work together.”
Pope Francis has said his first trip to a European country will be to Albania in September to pay tribute to those who suffered under communism.
“I thought it would be helpful for that noble nation,” the Pope said referring to Albanians.
A Vatican spokesman had earlier said the pope wanted his first trip in Europe to be to a “country on the margins” with a past of social and religious persecution and continuing poverty.
The choice of Albania is significant, says Christoph Strack, a columnist with German public broadcaster DW
“Mainly, however, he is visiting countries with massive structural poverty. Almost demonstrative pastoral closeness to people on the fringes of society, paired with prophetically fierce criticism of the beneficiaries of the present system — blasted by Francis as ‘inhuman’: that is the face of Francis’ church,” Strack writes in an op-ed. “The papal travel plans don’t leave Europe out completely, but the next destination is in line with the general concept. In mid-September the Pope visits Europe’s poorhouse Albania for a day. There, too, people are bound to view the pope more as a caring pastor than as a distant church leader. But his words will be directed at prosperous Europe — where they might just go unheard.”
Ahead of the historic visit of Pope Francis to Albania next September, the government has set up a state commission to organize and coordinate events for the second papal visit to post-communist Albania.
“The Pope’s visit is great news, a very good and comprehensive message, not only for Albania and Albanians but also for the whole region,” said Culture Minister Mirela Kumbaro, who will head the state commission on Pope’s visit.
Last June, Pope Francis announced he had chosen Albania for his first European trip.
The visit aims to encourage a country that “long suffered” under a communist dictatorship which tried to isolate its citizens from the world, Vatican sources told the media.
Former dictator Enver Hoxha proclaimed Albania, for decades one of the world’s most isolated countries, the world’s first atheist state in 1967. Many religious buildings and clerics were destroyed and imams and priests were arrested.
Francis said he wanted to make the trip to “encourage a country that has long suffered from the consequences of the ideologies of the past.”
At 10 percent of total population, Albania has a large Catholic minority, which makes up the largest part of the population in the country’s two northwestern regions. Fifty seven percent of Albanians self-identified as Muslim in the 2011 census. Albania has been rated as one of the least religious countries in the world, according to Pew research.
Communism collapsed in Albania in 1992 and the late Pope John Paul II visited the following year. It will be the second papal visit to post-communist Albania.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said the pope’s visit would promote “the values of co-existence in peace among faiths and ethnicities.”
Pope Francis has focused most of his visits outside Europe, with his first visit to Asia earlier this week in he called for reconciliation between South Korea and its bitter communist rival, North Korea.
The pontiff issued his call for peace on the troubled Korean peninsula at a Mass at Seoul’s Myeongdong cathedral that was attended by South Korean President Park Geun-hye. He said reconciliation would only come through forgiveness, even though it may seem “impossible, impractical and even at times repugnant.”
“Let us pray, then, for the emergence of new opportunities for dialogue, encounters and the resolution of differences, for continued generosity in providing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and for an ever greater recognition that all Koreans are brothers and sisters, members of one family, one people,” said Francis.
During his five-day visit to South Korea, Pope Francis reached out to communist-run countries like China and North Korea, urging them to foster a proper dialogue with the Vatican.