Pope urges Albanian bishops to minister to Albanian emigrants

Published: 2008-05-23

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the bishops of Albania to confront a double task: repairing the spiritual damage left by decades of communism and ministering to the many Albanians who have left the country in recent years. The pope spoke to the bishops May 23. They were on their "ad limina" visits to the Vatican, a series of consultative meetings made approximately every five years. The pope said the atheistic regime that ruled Albania until 1992 had left a "sad inheritance" from which its people are still recovering. The bishops now have the difficult job of helping the country find a new way of thinking about the social order, he said. He said they also face the phenomenon of emigration, which has taken hundreds of thousands of Albanians to Western Europe and other developed countries. The bishops not only need to assign priests for pastoral care to Albanians outside the country, but also make contact with bishops in the host countries and establish lines of communication with local churches there, the pope said.

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