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Executive Director Schwartz in Exchange on Christians in the Albanian Lands, First Things, August/September 2006
Exchange on Christians in the Albanian Lands
First Things (New
York), August/September 2006
The Albanian Persecution
In “Broken Promises” (April), Stephen Schwartz bears eloquent witness to the
bloody persecution that Albania’s Catholics endured under that nation’s
Communist dictatorship. One regrets that Schwartz chose to limit his
eloquence to events past and his Christian solidarity to Roman Catholics.
Schwartz writes not one word about the perilous
situation that Albania’s Orthodox Christian minority faces today from
Albania’s Muslim majority—never mind a word about the Orthodox blood that
was shed by Albania’s Communists. By no means were Roman Catholics the only
martyrs and confessors for Jesus Christ in Red Albania.
In passing, Schwartz refers to “the liberation of
Kosovo in 1999.” He appears to be unaware that one of the things Kosovo was
“liberated” from was Christianity.
In testimony before the U.S. Congressional Task Force
for Human Rights on March 15, His Grace Teodosije, auxiliary bishop of
Lipljan and vice-chairman for Kosovo and Metohija of the Holy Assembly of
Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, spoke of the plight of the 200,000
Serbian Christians who have fled their homes in the face of Kosovar Albanian
violence and of the dismal prospects of the remaining Kosovar Serbs for
anything resembling a normal life.
“Our children are growing up in constant fear and
uncertainty because the society being built around is not a society where
all citizens are equal, but a society that is being tailored exclusively to
meet the needs of the majority Albanian community, in which Serbs and other
non-Albanians live as more or less welcome guests and strangers,” Bishop
Teodosije testified.
“Unfortunately, this sort of relationship takes us right back to the
organization of society in Kosovo which led to armed conflict and the
intervention of the NATO forces. Did U.S. soldiers come to Kosovo in order
to make it possible for one form of repression to be replaced with another?
They certainly did not but, unfortunately, that is the reality that exists
not only in our eyes, but also in the eyes of many objective international
observers,” Bishop Teodosije said.
His Grace also provided documentation, yet again, of
the systematic “torching and destruction of 150 holy shrines (in Kosovo and
Metohija), several dating back to the Middle Ages, of irreplaceable value,”
which fact has been corroborated by UNESCO, as well as “the eradication of
cemeteries where almost all crosses have been obliterated.”
The restoration of “Albanian Catholic culture” is indeed a cause
worth fostering. But this restoration will never happen in Albania or
elsewhere in the region unless Christians in the West unite to defend equal
human rights for Albanian Christians and Kosovar Christians alike.
Here is a God-sent opportunity for the Holy See to put
some teeth into its talk about Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement.
Michael Redmond
Princeton, New Jersey
Schwartz replies:
I visit all the Albanian lands frequently and speak and read
Serbian and Albanian. The claim that Orthodox Christians in Albania suffer
any discrimination of any kind at the present time is not only a total
invention, it is so novel I have never encountered it before. Orthodox
Christians and people of Orthodox heritage – whether Albanian, Greek, or
Vlach (a Romanian-speaking minority) – not only enjoy rights in Albania that
Albanian and Vlach minorities do not possess in Orthodox Greece, they are
highly placed in the Albanian state and media. If there is any controversy
involving Orthodox Christians in Albania, it has to do with the scandalous
fact that the head of the Albanian Orthodox Church, Anastasios Yannoulatos,
is an ethnic Greek and citizen of Greece, rather than an Albanian.
While the Albanian Communist regime repressed the
Orthodox church, ethnic Greeks and Vlachs of Orthodox background were
favored cadres in the system of dictator Enver Hoxha. Many of them were
former members of the so-called Democratic Army of Greece, a Communist
terror force, which retreated into Albania.
The claim that Kosovo was “liberated from
Christianity” is a despicable distortion. The Albanian Catholic church
maintains its houses of worship in every major Kosovo town. I visit them
about twice a year. The Serbian Orthodox Church is protected by NATO
troops. While numerous Serbs fled Kosovo after their brutal terror over
Kosovar Albanians ended, the figure of 200,000 is exaggerated; Serbia did
not and does not have the capacity to absorb 200,000 Serbian refugees from
Kosovo.
It is undeniable that some Serbian Orthodox
churches have been vandalized or demolished in Kosovo. It is also
undeniable that most of those that were damaged were established in the
period of Serbian imperialist rule beginning in 1912, with such
construction expanded after 1987, to symbolize Serb domination of the
province. Similarly, in the 1920s, with the independence of Poland from
tsarist rule, the enormous and hideously ugly St. Alexander Nevsky Orthodox
Cathedral that had been erected in Warsaw to represent Russian power over
the Poles, was leveled. I oppose double standards on these matters. The
Albanians were, are, and will be the overwhelming majority in Kosovo, and
they will soon be its masters. There is no reason they should be compelled
to preserve or protect structures intended not for legitimate worship but as
a form of cultural aggression.
The old Orthodox monasteries and churches of
Kosovo, many of which were originally built by Macedonians, Bulgarians, and
Vlachs, and which were then seized and taken over by Serbs, deserve to be
and will be preserved, protected, and, where damaged, restored. The figure
of 150 Serbian “shrines” torched and destroyed in Kosovo is misleading and
exaggerated; indeed, the manipulation employed in advancing this argument is
obvious in the phrasing of Bishop Teodosije, who said only that “several” of
the sites were ancient. At the same time, some 250 Muslim mosques were
destroyed in Kosovo in the 1998-99 period, by Serbian terrorists. The
latter acts have been fully documented without rhetorical excess, which is
unnecessary since the vandalism speaks for itself.
It is seldom mentioned that the clerics of the
Serbian Orthodox hierarchy who loudly protest their situation in Kosovo
maintain an abusive usurpation over the properties of the Autocephalous
Orthodox Churches of Montenegro and Macedonia. The rights of the latter are
completely denied. Now that Montenegro has declared its independence, the
Montenegrin Orthodox should attain restoration of control over their
churches. Albanian Catholics and Muslims, who are a substantial minority in
Montenegro, support this position, as they also do regarding the Macedonian
Orthodox Christians.
It is even less often mentioned that Serbian
clerics from Kosovo and its neighboring regions, who continually come to the
U.S. to bewail their situation, such as Bishops Artemije Radosavljevic
and Amfilohije Radovic, are fanatical advocates for one of the worst
Jew-baiters in 20th century history, the Serbian Orthodox cleric Nikolai
Velimirovic. Men like Artemije and Amfilohije (both of whom I know
personally) have proved extremely adroit at hiding their real views when
they deal with Westerners. I myself was fooled more than once by
Artemije.
The Holy See should be more concerned with
justice for the memories of the martyred Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian, and
other Catholics slain by Slobodan Milosevic’s terrorists, the latter who
were blessed in their murderous activities by clerics like Amfilohije, than
with an attempt to create a Catholic-Orthodox intrigue to defame Albanians,
whether Muslim or otherwise.