As a young man of around fourteen or fifteen, it was an amusement, late at night in my bedroom in England, gently to move the dial on the shortwave section of my radio until it picked up the faint crackling broadcasts of Radio Tirana.
It was the late 1970s and Albania was a mysterious and almost impossible place to visit. The broadcasts, with the signal going in and out, spoke of decayed Western capitalism and the glorious achievements of the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha. Sadly, at that early stage in my life, I did not realize that the humor of listening to this absurd propaganda hid the unutterable horrors of what ordinary Albanians, especially the persecuted Church, was enduring.
Hoxha, the “Supreme Comrade, Sole Force and Great Teacher,” after taking power in 1945, winning the “election” with an implausible 93 percent of the vote – his Communist Front was the only party allowed to stand – began immediately to persecute all religions, but attacked the Catholic Church with particular ferocity, alleging that it was a foreign and disloyal entity.
Priests, bishops, and many laypeople were arrested, sent to work camps and prisons, tortured, and denounced. At one point, it
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