Dom Simon Jubani

Simon Jubani ( born March 8, 1927 in Shkodra, † July 12, 2011 ibid ) was an Albanian Catholic priest. He was the first priest who celebrated again in 1990 a public service. During the communist dictatorship, he was imprisoned almost continuously since the imposition of the ban religion from 1967 to 1989.

Life

Dom Simon Jubani was born in Shkodra. At the age of 16, he began in 1943 his ecclesiastical studies at the Seminary of the Jesuits in his hometown. After the closure of church school by the communists he continued his education at a state secondary school.

In 1957/58 he served as a deacon in the Mirdita. After his ordination in May 1958, he had just there as pastor. In 1964 he was arrested and condemned by the political justice to 25 years of forced labor. Much of the time he spent in the notorious prison of Burrel in solitary confinement because he refused to work in the mines. There Jubani was also frequently tortured. In 1988 he was first paroled. But he soon came again into prison because he did not stick to the rule of silence the communist rulers. His final release was made on 13 April 1989.

On November 4, 1990 Simon Jubani celebrated in the chapel of the Catholic cemetery of Shkodra, the first public exhibition in Albania for decades. The religious ban was not officially lifted and the sacred buildings were located, to the extent they were not destroyed in the hands of the state. At another exhibition at the cemetery on November 11, several thousand faithful attended. This service in 1990 was an important landmark in the anti-communist liberation movement in Albania.

Dom Simon was in 1991 the first Albanian minister who was received by Pope John Paul II in Rome. During this interview the foundations for the reconstruction of the Albanian church were laid.

In the nineties, Dom Simon Jubani in various Catholic universities in Belgium, France and the United States has been a guest lecturer. In Albania, he again worked as a priest in Shkodra and the adjacent former Catholic majority regions.

The Albanian rulers, the Democrats as well as the Socialists, was Dom Simon Jubani even after the end of communism critical. In 1993 he denounced publicly the corruption of the Berisha government. Since 1995, he received death threats and armed gangs shot at his house in Shkodra.

After Sali Berisha again in 2005 took over the government, Jubani criticized the Prime Minister sharply. He made it essential for the social impoverishment of large parts of the Albanian people responsible. Bersisha have complicity that 50,000 Albanian women and girls were sold to Western Europe into prostitution.

Perhaps there were also sharp political opinions Jubanis that opposed an appeal to the bishop in one of the Albanian dioceses. Of all the priests who had survived the communist regime of violence, he was the youngest and healthiest, and his contributions to the reconstruction of the Catholic Church in their early 90s are generally recognized.

Honors

1991 gave the University of San Francisco Dom Simon Jubani an honorary doctorate. The U.S. state of Michigan paid tribute Jubanis commitment to freedom of the press, in particular the structure of the Church Press, 1996 with an award.

Works

• Burgjet e mia. Kujtime ( My imprisonment. Memories. ) Shkodra / Rome 2001