Albanians Rediscover God, If Not Old-Time Religion

Eva Ndoja, a 20-year-old factory worker among the more than 2,000 people who regularly attend the Catholic cathedral's 10 a.m. Sunday Mass, said she cherishes her right to go to church because her parents couldn't. "I like being part of this big congregation," she said, as hundreds of people who had stood in the aisles filed out of the building that for so long had been used for basketball games. "Going to church makes me feel good."

There are no reliable statistics on religion in this country, which still fiercely separates religion from politics. It is generally thought that the majority of Albanians are Muslim, though many do not practice their faith. There are also significant numbers of Albanian Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Bektashis, a distinctive Sufi Muslim sect that maintains its world headquarters here, as well as Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and others.

Many Albanians who grew up learning in school that God didn't exist still have no desire to practice religion. "There are still atheists, but the number of believers is growing every day," said Rasim Hasanaj, chairman of Albania's State Committee on Cults, as the government office in charge of religious affairs is called.

Shkoder, religious leaders said, has roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, many mixed marriages and people who join in both Easter and Eid celebrations. Many Albanians interviewed here said they are grateful for the money and manpower from foreign religious groups. Not only has the largess built new churches and mosques, it has funded job training, food, roads, irrigation, schools and other projects.

But there is concern about funding coming from Muslim extremist groups. Many people also say they worry that foreign influence is introducing conservative or radical thinking in other religions as well, at odds with Albania's history as a moderate, multi-faith society.

For example, several large crosses erected in the hills outside Shkoder have created tensions, and at least one has been cut down. Many Muslims said they thought Christians from abroad might have put up the crosses, because the custom here -- long before the communists intervened -- was to be more discreet with religious symbols so they would not offend people of other faiths.

"I think it is a good idea to keep religious symbols inside," said Ndricim Sulejmani, the mufti of Shkoder. Perhaps, the Muslim leader said, the tradition has contributed to the good relations in Albania between people of different faiths.

He said thousands of Muslims now attend Friday prayers in 54 mosques in the area, twice as many as existed before the attempt to wipe out faith. "Trying to kill religion was an injustice, and injustices are destined to fail," he said.

Sulejmani said he went to Syria for his religious training because for so many years none was available here. But new Christian and Islamic schools have opened where growing numbers of people study the Bible and the Koran.

Leaders of the main religious faiths are united in demanding that the government return land seized from them during the communist era. For one thing, they said, it would add to their wealth and make them less dependent on foreign funds. But government efforts to return property have been complicated, because many people have built homes on land long ago taken from religious groups.

Pllumi, the Catholic priest, said he looks forward to a day when "religious institutions in Albania are led by Albanians." He noted the outcry last year when a Muslim leader who had spent many years studying in the Middle East criticized a decision to put up a statue of Mother Teresa in Shkoder. The nun, a Nobel Peace laureate, was an ethnic Albanian whose parents had connections to the city. "An Albanian Muslim would never think to criticize a statue of Mother Teresa," Pllumi said.

The life of Pllumi, a frail man who spoke in his tiny room in the Franciscan monastery where priests were once jailed, embodies the story of this country's relationship with faith. First arrested for being a Catholic priest in the 1940s, when communism initially took hold here, he said, he was released three years later. Then in 1967, the year Hoxha declared Albania officially atheist, Pllumi was detained again and for 22 years was moved among various work camps.

At a copper mine where he was forced to work, he said, he saw a leading Muslim cleric who had also been jailed. Taking away people's freedom of religion, he said, is a sure way "to make religion strong."

Pllumi reached beneath his black sweater and showed how he used to secretly make a tiny sign of the cross on his chest. If caught making any gesture of faith -- and he was -- there was more punishment. Sometimes that meant being tossed into isolation, stripped naked and left on a cold, wet, concrete floor.

He hates to be cold now. Even though the temperature rises to nearly 60 degrees on these spring days, he said he would wait for warmer weather before going outside. Using a giant magnifying glass, he spends his days reading, often about the world's religious conflicts. He prays that harmony lasts in Albania, he said. A smile came to his worn face when he recalled how Muslims offered to be his bodyguards when he was finally released from prison and began celebrating outdoor Masses in Shkoder.

Sitting on his bed, covered with a spread decorated with colorful little sailboats, Pllumi said his home town's religious renaissance proves that faith cannot be wiped out by decree, bulldozers or bullets.

"Religion keeps people alive," he said.