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Banishing God in Albania:

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When communist leader Enver Hoxha finally consolidated his rule over Albania, a mountainous country on the Adriatic, one of the first measures he implemented was a ban on religion. Taking Marx's adage that "Religion is an opiate of the masses," Hoxha and his fellow travelers attempted to make themselves central to its citizen's lives. The government deemed this action necessary because the communists saw Albania's three faiths--Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity--as an obstacle to national unification. In an effort to make communism the new state "religion," harsh measures of suppression and punishment directed against the representatives of these faiths took place. In "Banishing God in Albania," Jesuit priest Giacomo Gardin outlines his personal encounter with the horrific measures taken by the communist government to turn Albania into the world's only "atheistic state." I considered this book a necessary read because surveys of Albanian history often mention that the communists banned religion without delving into specifics. Gardin's book therefore helps to fill a critical gap in the general histories of post-World War II Albania.

Gardin was an Italian by birth who went to Albania after his ordination in order to help spread the gospel in that rugged country. He eventually learned the language and customs so well that people often mistook him as a native Albanian. When the communists came to power after the Germans pulled out of the country, sinister persecutions rapidly took place. Authorities tortured and executed many Albanian priests, several of whom held high-ranking positions in the Church. Communist propaganda spread amongst the population charged Catholic priests with being "agents of the Vatican" and thus enemies of the new people's state. Many foreign priests left the country at the insistence of Hoxha's regime, but Giacomo Gardin did not make it out as easily. Arrested on highly suspect charges of subversion and pro-fascism, the government placed the Jesuit and several others on trial. Gardin drew a six-year prison term, a sentence that stretched into ten years in a country where such antiquated ideas as justice and civil rights were mere words written on a piece of paper.

The author outlines in some detail the outrages committed against officials of the Church of Albania. After executing a few dozen priests, the government ordered the Church dissolved. All Roman Catholic representatives who did not leave the country could no longer openly practice their religion without the threat of serious retribution from police agents employed by the state. Some ceremonies still took place clandestinely, especially during periods of political "thaw" between Italy and Albania, but for the most part citizens and officers of the Church who wished to engage in religious practices risked detention, confiscation of property, and death. Once inside the prison walls, priests merited special scorn from guards and bureaucrats. Communist officials forced men of the cloth to give up their black frocks and don prison attire. Moreover, when the government ordered prisoners to toil on special public works projects, the priests usually drew the heaviest labor assignments. Gardin and his fellow clerics worked on several projects designed to reroute rivers in order to create new farmland, a type of grinding toil that often broke the spirit of the men assigned to the task. In more than a few cases the work outright killed the convict laborers.

More than once the accounts of Gardin's imprisonment reminded me of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago." Hoxha's prison system mirrored in many respects Stalin's labor camp system, from the inhuman punishments meted out to prisoners to the lengthy, senseless interrogations of those poor souls unlucky enough to fall into the clutches of the state. The comparison really should not surprise us since Hoxha considered Stalin the deity of world communism. The Albanian leader often assumed a sycophantic posture toward the grouchy Georgian, as a short excerpt from Hoxha's mind deadening panegyric "With Stalin"--included in an appendix of this book--shows. Unlike Solzenitsyn's massive expose, "Banishing God in Albania" explains away many of the atrocities committed against priests as a test from God designed to strengthen the faith of his followers. Gardin often saw the hand of the lord working actively even during times of severest stress. The author credits God with eventually easing his burden during the end of his prison term, when many of the guards began to treat him with respect and conditions marginally improved.

The book contains a short message from Pope John Paul II about the significance and impact of these memoirs, the aforementioned excerpt from Hoxha concerning Stalin, two sections of the Albanian constitution legalizing the abolishment of religion, and a sermon about Gardin's internment delivered by the priest at a conference held in San Francisco in 1985. "Banishing God in Albania" is well worth reading for both non-Catholics and readers interested in the history of the country. A few problems, such as Gardin's rather hazy sense of chronology and an inadequate explanation about why he went to prison while other foreign nationals left the country, do little to mar the stirring power of this thin volume. I look forward to similar chronicles from members of the Muslim and Orthodox Christian communities in Albania, two groups who also experienced persecution at the hands of Hoxha's terrorists. The communists are no longer in power in Albania, but their destructive policies will continue to scar the country for many generations to come. Gardin's book provides evidence of only a fraction of the monstrous crimes committed by this regime.