Albanian bishop recalls his secret baptism, catechesis (Aid to the Church in Need)

In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, an Albanian bishop recounted how he was baptized and catechized secretly during the years of the nation’s brutally anti-religious Communist regime (1946-92).

“When I was one week old, my grandparents took me and had me baptized in secret,” said 52-year-old Bishop Simon Kulli of Sapë. “They taught us the prayers, the Our Father, the sign of the Cross, the Hail Mary—but always in secret, in a family setting.”

Bishop Kulli said that incarcerated priests secretly celebrated Masses in prison and that a nun brought Holy Communion to the faithful. He linked his priestly vocation to a Mass celebrated by one of these formerly imprisoned priests after the fall of Communism:

My vocation arose from seeing one of those old priests celebrating Mass in Latin in my parish for the first time. It was the first Mass after the liberation of faith in Albania ... Seeing that suffering priest, who found it so difficult to celebrate Mass, who was bent over at the altar because of the years in prison, I thought I could replace him. And that was where my priestly vocation was born.