ROME — The authority with which Cardinal Ernest Simoni speaks today was bought at a terrible price.
Arrested on Christmas Eve 1963 after celebrating a Mass for the repose of the soul of slain President John F. Kennedy, he was condemned to death by Albania’s communist regime simply for exercising his priesthood, before the sentence was commuted and he spent 18 years in prison.
During his time in jail, he endured torture and harsh conditions, but he continued to offer the sacraments in secret and refused every attempt to make him renounce his faith or denounce the Church in what became in 1967 the world’s first “atheist state.” After his release in 1981, he was still considered an “enemy of the people” and was forced to work in mines and sewers, but he continued to exercise his priestly ministry clandestinely until the fall of the communist regime in 1990.
Pope Francis, who called Cardinal Simoni a “living martyr,” elevated him to cardinal 10 years ago this November.
In this June 28 interview with the Register in Rome following Pope Leo XIV’s second consistory of cardinals, Cardinal Simoni, 97, addresses those who today are persecuted for the faith. Drawing on Holy
