Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the 16th General Assembly of the Superiors of Regulars Catholic Orders in Europe:
Very distinguished guests, who have come from different places!
Given the specific nature of this assembly, it is unusual for a Prime Minister of Albania to address the assembly of Catholic Orders.
The fact is that this is an event with a special importance for the Albanian Catholic community, initiated by Don Giovanni Peragine who in his secular life, in conformity with the Barnabites vocation, would rather be known as the humble parish priest of Milot, as opposed to the somehow pompous Chairman of Europe’s Regular Superiors Union.
The ambition to make Albania, once again, a meeting point for the artisans of peace, and the modesty with which organizers took such a challenge, made me accept with pleasure the invitation to be here today and to address this assembly.
What made me even more be here today is the always lively memory of the pastoral visit of Pope Francis, who he himself belonged to the regular order before climbing the church hierarchy.
The Apostle Paul, whom Monsignor Noli would with good reason call the Evangelist of the Albanians, defines in these terms the inspired word: “The word of the Spirit is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”.
As such resounds to me the word that Pope Francis spoke during and after his visit to Tirana: “In Albania, we have evidence of something that exceeds tolerance and coexistence. In Albania we have the experience of religious brotherhood, the experience of being inseparably together.”
Perhaps such a word is simple to be articulated and understood by everyone, but said by a regular Jesuit, who is also bishop of Rome, it carries the value of permanent evidence in the service of what in Latin is called communio, which translated in the ancient liturgical form means communion or the sacrament.
Catholic regular orders and Albania have something in common which is unique: for them, in their midst, among their children, the word communio, communion, comes from the meaningful gesture of sharing the bread and wine, an ordained reality for the believer and the symbol of brotherhood and friendship for all Albanians, which is spread and reflected in a convivial dimension that knows no boundaries.
Although unknown, Albania, land of contrasts, has been since the very beginning a fertile field in which communion has grown as an evident philosophy of coexistence and brotherhood. A blissful paradox that today is bearing rare fruits happened right here, in our land, hundreds years ago.
In a meeting with people of culture in Paris, in the famous college of the Bernardines, members of the Cistercian order, recalling the network of monasteries and abbeys that formed the first European culture without borders, Pope Benedict XVI said that the mission of religious orders has since ever been the pedagogy of Quaerere Deum, “To seek God”.
This expression, that is worth pondering today, was echoed by the word of Pope Paul VI at the closing of the Second Vatican Council, 50 years ago: “The religion of the God who became man has met the religion of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it”.
The search for God along with the search for Man were embodied in all their complexity by the regular orders in Albania.
Not surprisingly, those religious communities that did not hesitate to wear the misery, poverty, discrimination and denial that Albanians had suffered for centuries as they were wearing the most noble, the most fabulous, the most worthy garments of a prince of the Church, flourished in the glory of their modesty among the lofty and sometimes haughty tribes of early Albania.
It is not surprising, on the contrary it is in accordance with the vocation of this land, that on the way to meet with the Sultan of Egypt and speak with him, the great St. Francis of Assisi stopped by the coats of Lezha and planted there the first Franciscan nursery in Southeast Europe.
Franciscans who gathered the traditions of the Albanians and left them to the next generations in written;
Dominicans who left the first evidence of Albanian as an autonomous idiom with Pseudo-Brocard’s relation of 1332;
Lazarists who, while healing the weary bodies affected by endemic diseases in the Albanian villages, cultivated the love for letters and history;
Jesuits who would heal the wounds of the soul and build out of nothing seminaries, schools, and cultural centres that formed the leading figures of Albanian letters;
Stigmatines and missionaries of Mother Teresa, who have looked for years after the poor of every religion and every belonging, despite persecutions, murders and countless plagues.
Provided with the necessary charisma of the soul and intelligence, the members of religious orders can rightly be called artisans of peace and communion.
Historians, researchers, etiologists, scholars have the right to investigate and discuss the usefulness theological, philosophical and moral life of religious orders.
With its sovereign right, the unbiased state sees their performance as community institutions that must operate in accordance with the laws and fundamental principles of public freedoms. The state welcomes and supports their major contribution to the initiatives of social and cultural character as an aid to its impersonal and superior role in education, health, social welfare and culture.
No less important than the role of the good Samaritan who cares for everyone is your vocation for wisdom and constantly building bridges between different faiths, but also between deist and atheist philosophies.
The two lapidary expressions that the elite of religious orders has bequeathed us, Ora et labora – “Pray and Work – with St. Benedict and Fides et ratio – “Faith and Reason” – with Saint Thomas Aquinas, are to this day a call always present for understanding, civilization and coexistence, which finds in Albania still to this day a privileged and fertile ground because of the understanding and coexistence that religious communities in this country combine and radiate at best as a model to be looked at, to be admired, but also to be followed by everyone.
In this respect, I believe it is of particular importance the moment in which during the assembly, you dedicated to roundtables with representatives of other faiths, not deprived of specific experience of religious life. Albanian Orthodoxy and Bektashism within Albanian Islam represent in this area a history of interest and merit. Shared among you through this assembly, this history further enriches the spiritual life of this territory where you have chosen to come together.
With simple premise in a world increasingly complicated, members of religious orders give an example of uninterrupted good of which, despite the tragedies of universal dramas, we must not lose sight, and like God for some, like the Man for some others, like Wisdom of all, must be searched continuously, no matter how dense is the fog that creates universal dramas and tragedies.
Today, in hot areas of the globe where barbarism is coming back almost as a daily lifestyle, members of religious orders are those who, in conditions that are unimaginable to us who look at these hot spots from afar, come materially and spiritually to help populations and the most humble people.
From North Korea which still today is ruled by an absurd dictatorship, in Cuba weary of a draining isolation, passing through the weary regions of the Middle East, Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, Catholic orders provide a unique example of vitality and commitment through sacrifice that all together derive from a single word: simplicity of the soul face the dimension of a very complicated world.
Diplomats, mediators, conciliators, mediators in archaic litigations, doctors and teachers, labourers and nurses, members of religious orders can be seen with admirable surprise in the four corners of the globe, weaving tirelessly and with extreme modesty, with incomparable discretion, with an impressive patience, the canvas of peace and communion among all people, regardless of race, regardless of beliefs, regardless of geographic or social positions.
Dear friends,
with your example you contribute to fulfil a trust recalled to our consciences by Pope Francis, as I said at the beginning of this speech, but left here, a few meters away from the hall, in the stairs of the building by St. John Paul II during his historic visit to Albania 22 years ago. In this square that you walked before coming into this room, he said: “We must learn the art of dialogue and listening, even when this art is troublesome . This is the price of liberty, this is the secret of true moral and civil progress”.
And this is to be artisans of peace and communion between brothers. And our primary rule, whether religious or not, is to try to reconcile our consciences.
Thank you!
