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Corriere della Sera on Cardinal Ernest Simoni: He was sentenced to death in Albania after the mass for former President Kennedy

2025-12-17 19:01:41Histori SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Albanian Cardinal, Ernest Simon

A testament to a life marked by peace, faith, and the price someone is willing to personally pay to protect them.

This is what Albanian Cardinal Ernest Simoni, 97, confessed to the students of Treviglio, where he spent 28 years in prison under the Albanian dictatorial regime.

It was a deeply moving meeting with the 300 school students who participated the day before at the TNT Theater in Bergamo.

"We joined a program launched by the Caravaggio and Treviglio schools on the theme of peace," explains director Davide Finazzi.

“As part of this, we decided to invite the cardinal and, when he accepted, we wanted to share the event with students from all the schools.” His secretary, Vieri Lascialfari, helped the cardinal tell his story.

Monsignor Ernest Simoni, born in 1928, demonstrated his faith from childhood: at the age of 4, his mother "caught" him praying at mass and at the age of 10, he asked to enter the Franciscan monastery in Shkodra.

However, with the end of World War II, the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha was established in the country. Within a few years, the regime tightened control over religious freedom and decreed state atheism, with harsh penalties for those who violated it.

The monastery was also put under surveillance, with police hiding weapons under the altar, leading to a raid that resulted in the arrest and execution of the priest and teachers, while novices were expelled and then recruited.

Thus, the future cardinal found himself in uniform from 1953 to 1955, three years spent in extremely difficult conditions.

Without ever giving up his faith, he clandestinely resumed his theological studies. Ordained a priest in 1956, he began his pastoral mission, but this was enough to make him a target.

On Christmas Eve 1963, while he was celebrating mass, four soldiers entered the church, interrupted the service, and announced his death sentence.

His crime was reportedly for celebrating a mass for the repose of the soul of US President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated a few months earlier.

“They forced him to take off his clothes,” the secretary recalls, “and then kicked him in front of his mother, who was sitting in the front row.” The death sentence was later commuted to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment in a one-and-a-half-meter cell.

It was during this period that Monsignor Ernest Simoni adopted the motto: "Love your enemies, forgive them, pray for them, and even give your life for them."

Even in prison, he continued his preaching and celebrated Masses, becoming the spiritual director of the prisoners.

For this reason, in 1973 he was charged with rioting and received another death sentence, which was later commuted to forced labor in copper mines.

After 1981, Simon was released from prison, but remained an "enemy of the people" for the regime, which assigned him to open sewers.

In 1991, the dictatorship fell and he was able to regain his clerical robes, helping to reopen village churches.

In 2014, he was the last priest to survive the regime when Pope Francis, on his first apostolic visit to Albania, asked to meet him.

The priest's testimony deeply moved the Pope, who called him a "living martyr" and two years later gave him the title of cardinal. "Pray for all those who persecute and offend you," the Albanian cardinal repeated to the students of Treviglio.

"We must always be messengers of peace and friendship. We must pray without ceasing for all people of every color and from every country of the world and convince them to love one another. We are all masterpieces of God," Cardinal Ernest Simoni preached./ Corriere della Sera


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