Vatican says Pope Francis was looking for a “country on the margins” with past of social and religious persecution for his first European visit.
TIRANA, June 17 – Pope Francis has chosen Albania for his first European trip, scheduling a one-day trip to Tirana on Sept. 21.
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.
The Pope announced the visit Sunday, speaking to the faithful in St. Peter Square at the Vatican. He said he accepted the invitation of the Albanian church officials and the country’s civil authorities. Prime Minister Edi Rama told the media about it a news conference in Durres scheduled at the same time as Vatican announcement.
The pope’s visit is “is a good omen for Albania,” Rama said.
A Vatican spokesman said Pope Francis was looking for a “country on the margins” with past of social and religious persecution for his first European visit.
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.”
Albanians were not allowed to practice any religion under communist rule from 1967 to 1990.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said the pope’s visit would promote “the values of co-existence in peace among faiths and ethnicities.”
Albania has a large Catholic minority, which makes up the largest part of the population in the country’s two northwestern regions.
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 after one by Pope John Paul II in 1993.
