Albania, Orthodox Church of

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

Christianity came to Albania in the 4th century from the north and south of the country, in the form of Byzantine as well as Latin missionaries. The country’s borderland status, poised between the ancient Latin and Greek empires, gave it a liminal status, and the Christian tradition of the land has always tended to represent both Eastern and Western Christian aspects.

Albania is today a religiously mixed country. About 20 percent of the population are Orthodox and 10 percent are Roman Cath­olic. This Christian land underwent exten­sive Islamicization after the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans in 1453. The leadership, and much of the general populace, quickly converted to the religion of their new mas­ters. The current Islamic population now numbers 70 percent of the total.

The Orthodox of this land historically leaned to the Byzantine church, and in its golden age the metropolitanate of Ohrid was a provincial rival to Constantinople in the excellence of its liturgical and intel­lectual life. The Byzantine archeological remains there are still highly impressive and the metropolitanate’s leadership was often staffed by significant Byzantine clergy and intellectuals.

In 1767, pressured by its Ottoman political masters, the patriarchate of Constantinople absorbed the church under its direct ecclesi­astical rule and thereafter directly appointed Albania’s metropolitan archbishops, all of whom until 1922 were Phanariot Greeks. The local church in the 20th century began to press for more independence; first in 1908 when the Young Turk movement disrupted Ottoman political control of the imperial provinces, and again after the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The figure of the priest Fan Noli figures significantly in this latter period. He was one of the first to produce an Albanian language version of the divine liturgy for use in a newly envisioned auto­cephalous Albanian Orthodox Church. He first circulated (and used) this on his tour of the USA in 1908, and from that time onward advocated autocephaly strongly, especially when he returned to the country in 1912. Fan Noli eventually was ordained bishop and became prime minister of Albania for a brief time in 1924, before being forced into exile.

In 1922 the majority of the synod of the Albanian church demanded the grant of autocephaly, and the Greek-born bishops among the hierarchy collectively left the country. By 1926 the Phanar had agreed to afford Albania autocephaly under certain terms, but the head of state, Amadh Zoghu, refused to countenance them. He would later assume the title of King Zog of Albania and (though a Muslim) patronized the Orthodox, confirming by state decree the hierarchy’s right to officiate as bishops, just like the sultans had before him, and the Byzantine emperors before them.

In 1929 the local Albanian synod proclaimed autocephaly independently of the Phanar, and was excommunicated for its pains by the patriarchate – a state of affairs which brought about the immedi­ate state-ordered exile of the exarch of Constantinople, Metropolitan Hierotheos, then resident in the country. The patriarch of Serbia recognized the autocephaly in due course and eventually fostered a recon­ciliation with the Phanar. Constantinople accepted the state of autocephaly in 1937, from which date it is customarily recorded.

In the years after World War II, Albania fell under the heavy hand of a communist oppres­sion which was intense in its severity. There was bitter persecution in the years after 1945, with several leading Orthodox hierarchs mur­dered by the communists; notably Archbishop Christophoros, whose death in mysterious circumstances was widely seen as state- sanctioned murder in the Stalinist mode. The Albanian leader at this time, Enver Hoxha, was particularly keen to please his Russian communist masters and ordered the state con­fiscation of all land owned by religious institu­tions (Muslim or Christian). The Albanian communist state policy during the 1950s was focused on bringing the surviving elements of the Orthodox Church under the jurisdictional care of the Moscow Patriarchate, and several

Albanian hierarchs who resisted that policy were forcibly deposed. In 1967 Hoxha’s gov­ernment, now looking to communist China’s Cultural Revolution for its inspiration, declared the complete and final closure of all Christian places of worship as the state was now to be a model atheist country; an empty statement, but one that was to produce many murders and imprisonments of clergy and imams, and to so exhaust the church’s resources that at the collapse of communism there were said to be only twenty or so priests still functioning in the country.

The Orthodox currently represent about half a million faithful, worshipping in 909 parishes. The senior hierarch is his Beatitude the Metropolitan of Tirana and Durazzo, Archbishop of All Albania. The current incumbent is the noted Greek Orthodox theologian Anastasios Yannoulatos. His appointment in 1992 by the Phanar was greeted with skepticism in some circles, anxious in case the struggle for Albanian ecclesiastical self-determination had been in vain, but his ministry has been marked by such energetic creativity that the archbishop is now recognized as having presided over a successful policy to restore an authentic Albanian church life. Under his care more than 250 churches have been restored or built, a national seminary established, and more than 100 clergy ordained.

The Albanian diaspora (chiefly those who had fled the motherland in order to escape communist oppression) continues under the jurisdictional protection of the patriarchate of Constantinople. The com­munist rule, as was usual elsewhere, succeeded in bringing a poor country down further onto its knees, and the Orthodox Church in Albania, like the rest of its people, is only now beginning to emerge from the chaos of its recent nightmare.

SEE ALSO: Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Hall, D. (1994) Albania and the Albanians. London: Pinter.

Pollo, S. and Puto, A. (1981) The History of Albania from its Origins to the Present Day. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Skendi,S. (1967) The Albanian National Awakening. Princeton: Princeton University Press.