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Anonymous
2016-04-29 15:10:19 Post No. 1060648
[Report]
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Anonymous
2016-04-29 15:10:19
Post No. 1060648
[Report]
>The Agrarian Reform Law of August 1946 nationalized most property of religious institutions. Many clergy and believers were tried, tortured, and executed. All foreign Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were expelled in 1946, and the Jesuit and Franciscan orders were banned. Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with education.
>Beginning in 1967 the Albanian authorities began a campaign to try to eliminate religious life in Albania. All 2,169 churches, mosques, tekkes, monasteries, and other religious institutions were either closed down or converted into warehouses, gymnasiums, or workshops.
>The clergy were publicly vilified and humiliated, their vestments taken and desecrated. More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned, and some were executed or starved to death. The monastery of the Franciscan order in Shkodër was set on fire, which resulted in the death of four elderly monks.
>The penal code of 1977 imposed prison sentences of three to ten years for "religious propaganda and the production, distribution, or storage of religious literature." A new decree that targeted Albanians with Islamic and religiously-tinged Christian names stipulated that they were to change them. It was also decreed that towns and villages with religious names must be renamed.
>Hoxha's campaign succeeded in eradicating formal worship, but some Albanians continued to practice their faith clandestinely. Individuals caught with Bibles, icons, or other religious objects faced long prison sentences. Religious weddings were prohibited. Parents were afraid to pass on their faith, for fear that their children would tell others. Officials tried to entrap practicing Christians and Muslims during religious fasts, such as Lent and Ramadan, by distributing forbidden foods in school and at work, and then publicly denouncing those who refused the food. Clergy who conducted secret services were incarcerated.
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