Pope visit helps shift perceptions

Pope Francis visit and the coverage that came with it has placed Albania in a flattering light, highlighting the best the country has to offer.
TIRANA TIMES EDITORIAL
Pope Francis’ visit to Albania was a gift to the Albanian people – not only through his message of hope and renewal, but also through the visit’s help in shifting perceptions about Albania.
As any Papal visit, it attracted global media attention, resulting in massive coverage by more than 1,000 visiting journalists. Much of the coverage dealt with what the Pope said rather than Albania itself, but the coverage about Albania was largely positive.
The journalists accompanying the Pope found what most other Europeans visiting Albania for the first time do: A country that is indeed poor by EU standards – but one that looks and feels European. That’s because Albania is European – in its history, values and hopes.
The reality is that most common Europeans don’t think much about Albania – a small country in the periphery of the continent. However, the ones who do, often hold prejudiced views that do not translate to the reality on the ground in 2014.
Albania has moved forward a lot in the past 15 years, but for many Europeans, its image has been stuck in the upheaval and major problems Albania and Albanians had between 1991 and 1999. And, of course, many of the European views are shaped by perception that Albanian organized crime is pervasive in Western Europe.
These views are amplified by people like Luc Besson, the French writer and producer behind the popular Taken films, which feature Albanians as criminal, violent, backward, tribal folk “who came out of the East” – who furthermore have one more reason to be feared – they are Muslim.
It’s easy for certain sectors of the European population to view Islam as monolithic body, and the debate whether simply being Muslim makes one un-European is lengthy, and we won’t get into for the purposes of this op-ed. But needless to say “mainly Muslim Albania,” as the international press puts it, can’t win any popularity contests with the right-wing, Euro-skeptic crowd.
Lucky for this country, the Pope’s visit has helped set the record straight.
“Albania is not a Muslim country, it’s a European one” is the answer Prime Minister Edi Rama has often repeated to questions by jounalists. The Pope himself used the same words on his way back to Rome last Sunday night.
Albanians identify by their ethnicity and country. They would like others to see them that way as well.
Religion means different things to different people. While 59 percent of the country’s population self-identified as Muslim in the last census, some estimates say that 90 percent of that group are non-practicing secular folks. These are the ones who see no problem going to attend the Pope’s open-air mass, and they made up quite a bit of the 300,000 crowd judging by the small number of people vying to take communion in the square.
There is nothing wrong with being religious. Albanians simply aren’t. And judging by religiosity surveys in Europe, that makes Albanians much more similar to the people to Albania’s West than East.