Blessed Jak Bushati

February 12th, we celebrate the feast of Blessed Jak Bushati( 8 August 1890 – 12 February 1949), one of the 38 Martyrs of Albania, imprisoned and tortured to death in the anti–Christian persecutions of the Albanian Communist government and who was beatified by Pope Francis on 5 November 2016.

In 1944, Albania erupted in civil war. Albania became one of the communist states most vehemently opposed to recognizing human religious experience, and in particular Catholicism. By 1946, through a series of public trials, imprisonments, executions, and mass banishments, the communists took control.

In 1967 it proclaimed itself as the first atheist state in the world. The persecution triggered by this false ideology affected every kind of believer; clergy, religious, and laity – young and old, from different social and cultural backgrounds. Around 130 Catholic priests were executed or died through harsh conditions in labour camps, alongside thousands of lay Christians, under the new regime (1945-1991)

Believers were savagely killed, humiliated in sham public trials, accused of fictional conspiracies, all in order to eliminate the Most Holy Name of God from the nation. Many of the bodies of those who were killed were also mutilated after death; buried under rubbish, thrown to dogs, flung into mass graves.

Among this vast array of victims are 38 witnesses to the Catholic faith, belonging to various dioceses, who were martyred between 1945 and 1974. These include 2 bishops, 21 diocesan priests, 7 Friars Minor, 3 Jesuits, 4 Laypeople and 1 Seminarian.There was one single woman killed – she was an aspirant (though no member) to the religious life of the Franciscan Sisters of the Stigmata.

Fr. Jak Bushati, born in Shkodra in 1890, studied at the Pontifical Seminary of Shkodre in Albania. He was ordained a priest on May 19, 1915, taking the Archdiocese of Shlodre-Pult in Albania. He was accused of helping saboteurs, for agitation and propaganda. He was put in prison and shot without trial on February 12, 1949.

He accepted the unjust condemnation in an exemplary way, suffered in a spirit of patience, and with strong and authentic faith. At the moment of death, he spoke words of forgiveness for his persecutors, and entrusted their oppressed country to God.

This terrible situation for Albanian Catholics came to an end with the dissolution of the communist regime. On November 4th, 1990, a celebration of Mass at the Catholic cemetery in Shkodra marked the resumption of public celebration of the Catholic faith.

Pope Francis, who made a flying visit to Albania in September 2014, was deeply moved by the testimonies of survivors of the persecution. Embracing two of them, Father Ernest Simoni and Sister Marije Kaleta, the pope emphasised that God had “held” them and helped them survive all the torture and the uncertainties.

Blessed Jak Bushati was beatified by Pope Francis on 5 November 2016. The beatification was celebrated at the Square of the Cathedral of Shën Shtjefnit, Shkodër, Albania, presided by Cardinal Angelo Amato.

Prayer:

O God, strength of all the Saints, who through the Cross were pleased to call the Martyrs Blessed Jak Bushati and companions to life, grant, we pray, that by their intercession we may hold with courage even until death to the faith that we profess.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Blessed Jak Bushati, pray for us.