From Frank Shkreli
Memorie.al / In the history of 20th-century Albania, there are figures who are not measured by the positions they held, nor by the power they exercised, but by the moral force with which they defended the truth. They became the conscience of a nation at times when conscience was required to remain silent. One of these figures is Father Pjetër Meshkalla, the Jesuit, the educator, the intellectual, and the prisoner of conscience, who remained unshaken in the face of one of the most brutal communist dictatorships in Europe. On the 38th anniversary of his passing, the memory of Father Pjetër Meshkalla is not merely an act of homage to a distinguished clergyman of the Albanian Catholic Church.
It is a moral obligation to remember an Albanian who defended freedom of conscience when it had been declared an enemy of the state, and who demonstrated through his life that no regime can subjugate the free spirit of a human being. Born in Shkodër on September 26, 1901, Father Pjetër Meshkalla was formed in the intellectual tradition of the Jesuit Order, completing his studies in Austria, Italy, and Slovenia. He returned to Albania with the conviction that education was the foundation of civilization and that the education of generations was the greatest service to the nation.
For his students, he was more than a professor: he was a molder of character, who taught them to think freely, to seek the truth, and to defend human dignity. This humanist and European formation made him irreconcilable with any totalitarian ideology, including the communist one. Just as he had opposed fascism, he could not accept communism either, which aimed to subjugate not only institutions but also human thought and conscience.
For this reason, Father Pjetër Meshkalla was arrested in 1946 and spent many years in the prisons and camps of the communist regime. But prison did not change him. On the contrary, it strengthened him. His fellow sufferers remember the Albanian Jesuit as a calm man, with a subtle humor, filled with faith and hope. In the dark cells, he continued to be a teacher, giving courage to the prisoners and reminding them that evil is never eternal.
In the monumental work “Rrno vetëm për me tregue” (Live Only to Bear Witness), Father Zef Pllumi describes Father Pjetër Meshkalla as one of the noblest figures of the Albanian Catholic Clergy, a man of broad culture, rare wisdom, and extraordinary spiritual serenity. For Father Zef Pllumi, Meshkalla was a teacher even in prison, because he preached through the example of his life and not merely through words.
The culmination of Father Meshkalla’s civic resistance came in 1967, when the communist regime undertook the barbaric campaign to eradicate religion in Albania, closing and destroying churches, mosques, and tekes, while the country was declared “the first atheist state in the world,” even declaring war on God. In that atmosphere of terror, Father Pjetër Meshkalla undertook an act that remains, even today, among the most courageous in modern Albanian history.
He sent a memorandum to the communist prime minister of the time, Mehmet Shehu, in which he openly opposed the violence against religion and the violation of freedom of conscience. His argument was clear: the state may exercise force over the human body, but it cannot rule over one’s conscience. Faith is not eradicated by decrees, by propaganda, or by imprisonments. He knew that this letter would send him back to prison. Yet he did not withdraw it.
For him, silence in the face of injustice would have been complicity. The regime reacted as expected: Father Meshkalla was arrested again and sentenced to further years of imprisonment. The memorandum of 1967 remains, to this day, one of the most important documents of Albanian moral resistance to totalitarianism. It was not a defense of the privileges of the Church, but a defense of a universal right: freedom of conscience.
In this sense, Father Pjetër Meshkalla was not only a great priest but also one of the earliest Albanian defenders of fundamental human rights. Father Pjetër Meshkalla belongs to that extraordinary generation of Albanian clergy and intellectuals, such as – Monsignor Vinçenc Prennushi, Father Zef Pllumi, and many others – who refused to sacrifice the truth for the sake of power.
In the same cultural and European tradition stand, among others, Ernest Koliqi and Martin Camaj as well, who, each in their own way, defended the cultural and national identity of Albanians and, for this, faced slander (even to this day), persecution, or exile. These men were not united by ideology; they were united by a higher ideal: the conviction that Albania belongs to Western civilization, that freedom of thought is sacred, and that culture cannot be built upon fear.
Father Pjetër Meshkalla passed away on July 28, 1988, just two years before the collapse of the regime that had imprisoned him for a large part of his life. He did not see with his own eyes the return of religious freedom and political pluralism, but he lived long enough to bear witness that no dictatorship is eternal. Today, as we hope that Albania becomes part of the democratic world and strengthens its institutions upon the values of the rule of law, the figure of Father Pjetër Meshkalla takes on an even greater significance.
The memory of him must not remain merely a commemorative ceremony. It must serve as a reminder that freedom is not guaranteed forever, that democracy requires citizens with free consciences, and that reconciliation with history is possible only on the foundation of truth. Today, at a time when moral relativism and historical amnesia risk dimming the memory of generations, the life of Father Pjetër Meshkalla remains a living testament.
It reminds us that a person may lose physical freedom, but not necessarily freedom of conscience; that faith may be persecuted, but cannot be destroyed; and that truth may be delayed, but cannot be defeated. This is the lesson that Father Pjetër Meshkalla leaves us today. It is not only the lesson of a Catholic priest, but of a great Albanian, who loved his country so much that he was willing to suffer for the right of every person to be free.
On this 38th anniversary of his passing, the finest homage is not merely to remember him. It is to defend those values for which he suffered: freedom of conscience, human dignity, tolerance, faith, and true democracy. This modest piece of writing is a tribute to a man who never separated his faith from his love for his Homeland, and never separated his faith from the defense of human dignity.
At the same time, for those who are interested, it is an invitation for today’s generations to come to know one of the noblest personalities in Albanian history and to understand that freedom, democracy, and human rights have had courageous defenders of human and national values even in the darkest years of the communist dictatorship.
Therefore, on the anniversary of his passing, we honor Father Pjetër Meshkalla with the conviction that his example continues to illuminate Albania’s path towards a future built upon truth, freedom, democracy, and human dignity. This is the reason why his name does not belong solely to the history of the Albanian Catholic Church. Father Pjetër Meshkalla belongs to the history of Albania! / Memorie.al
