On an Albanian spring day, dozens of Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians toil together up a steep, winding slope to St Anthony’s Church — different faiths all hoping for a miracle.
Some of the pilgrims heading up the stony path to the imposing church are barefoot and wedge their feet into cracks in rocks believed to have powers, including protection against disease.
Others collect five white stones along the way and, in accordance with tradition, whisper to each before placing it back on the ground.
Photo: AFP
Ilir, a young Orthodox Christian engineer, rubs his wallet on a rock, hoping for prosperity. “I have come to pray to God for my prayers to be granted this year,” he says.
Catholic mother-of-two Mir is praying St Antony will save her marriage.
“I have problems with my husband,” the young lawyer says.
“I come to ask God to give me a son this year,” says Servete, a Muslim who has traveled to Lac, about 50km north of the capital Tirana, from Durres further west.
On their slow march up the hill, the pilgrims pass a cave where legend says St Antony slept; some leave clothing belonging to their children or sick loved ones needing a cure.
The popular weekly pilgrimage is testament to the survival in Albania of a strong religious faith despite efforts of the 1945 to 1990 communist dictatorship to mercilessly root it out.
Repression and international isolation under the militantly atheistic regime, which banned all forms of religious expression, has today forged an original mix of faith, superstition, folklore and tolerance.
The majority of Albania’s population of almost 3 million is Muslim, but there are strong Orthodox and Catholic minorities too.
The different faiths tend to worship at the same places and people sometimes switch religions for convenience, which might shock some in less tolerant societies.
Here, God is the “same for the Catholics, the Orthodox and the Muslims,” anthropologist Aferdita Onuzi says. “All believe in a miracle that could change their life.”
With the communist dictatorship banning all religious practices in the country, sociologist Artan Fuga says: “Believers who could not practice their faith freely went to look for the divine where they could find it ... also using sacred places or objects from animist and pagan beliefs.”
In an example, thousands of Albanians of all faiths come together each August on Tomorri mountain in the south of the country to honor both a pagan sun cult and the religious practices of an Islamic Sufi order, the Bektashi.
“Common attendance by Muslims and Christians to the places of worship is a widespread phenomenon in Albania,” says Besnik Mustafaj of the non-governmental Forum of Alliance of Civilizations.
Many Albanians “during their eventful history, switched from one religion to another, because of economic necessities or more simply for practical questions,” says Lira Caushi, professor at Tirana’s university.
Albania was Christian when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century and many of its people converted to Islam in order to get jobs in the Ottoman administration.
In an example that persists today, Albanians who want to emigrate to neighboring Greece, an EU member, try to change their identity to prove they belong to Albania’s Greek minority and in the process convert to Orthodox Christianity.
Marriages between Muslims and Christians are frequent and many Albanians are at loss to say which religion they practice.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress