Authored by Dr. Dom Nikë Ukgjini. Translation Petrit Latifi.
To understand the topic in question, it is necessary to go back a little in time as a result of the cause and consequence of the conversion of Albanians from one faith to another.
The first conversion of the Arbëror occurred with the great schism of the Catholic Church in the 11th century and the division into East and West. Due to the consequences that this division had for Arbërija, the French scholar Jean-Claude Faveirial in 1884 would say, “The Greek schism was a vile intrigue to separate Illyria from Rome and to annex it to Byzantium.” (Book: (The (oldest) history of Albania)
The centuries-old Ottoman power, in order to keep the conquered Arbër people under control, imposed in various forms the new faith of Islam as a new religious division among the Arbër people, which occupation and Islamization were in complete contradiction with the decisions of the Arbër princes, gathered in Lezha on March 2, 1444.
The Islamization of the population that came as a result of physical liquidations, poverty, politics such as profiteering, the prohibition of education in the Albanian language, by law, in 1779, etc., would also be expressed in the alienation of customs and traditions, social order, clothing, the change of architecture, names, religious rites, and the return from Western to Eastern Islamic culture, would be expressed by scholars, Stadmyler, Bartel, Cordiano, Edwin Jacques, Drançollie and others.
The Ottoman conquest and the transition of Albanians in the Sultan’s faith, left serious consequences for the future of the people as an Albanian identity and as a territorial entity. According to foreign and domestic researchers, in international conferences, as a result of the Ottoman occupation, Albanians were not accepted as a nation, but according to the presentation made by the Ottoman Empire, where the 70% Islamized Albanians were identified as Turks, the Orthodox as Greeks and the Catholics as Latin.
Under the influence of the paranoid sultan, Abdyl Hamiti II (1876-1909), this idea, camouflaged with religious colors, was unfortunately formalized at the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, where the six Great Powers signed a treaty among themselves for the creation of new Balkan states and leaving Albania a vassal of Turkey, with its three religions, which as elements of the same ethnicity, insisted that Albania be independent and that its ancestral lands not be violated, what was manifested in the League of Prizren in 1878-79.
This exclusion of Albania was due to the fact that all the Balkan nations that were born in the Congress of Berlin, enjoyed a distinct Orthodox religious homogeneity, such as: Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, while Albania, due to the dark paths of history, had three faiths in its composition, which, despite their painful religious division, were the standard-bearers in the declaration of the Independence of Albania, on November 28, 1912 in Vlora.
Seen from the perspective of the extremely difficult situation of Catholic institutions in Albanian lands, as a result of the long devastation from the Ottoman occupation, the protectorate of the cult, granted by the Papacy of Rome, to the Austro-Hungarian Empire since the 18th century and reinforced with the Concordat signed between Rome and Vienna, in 1855, was a good chance for the recovery and protection of the Catholic population from the Ottomans and the promotion of investments in the religious, cultural, economic and political fields, in all Albanian lands confirmed in the Assembly of Arbër in 1703, from Tivar to Skopje.
Balkan wars and the conversion to the Orthodox faith
The clashes of the Balkan War, in 1912-1913, of four states (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro), against Turkey; Sultan Mehmet V (1909-1918), in October 1912, according to Serbian sources, encouraged the Great Powers of London to send a demarche, dated October 8, 1912, which stated that no self-initiative for new fighting should be undertaken, “because at their conclusion, no kind of change of borders and Status would be accepted by the Great Powers quos, (suspended state) in the Balkans.
The newly formed Balkan League, silently supported by Tsarist Russia, on the contrary, to decide the Conference which continued its work in London before the fait accompli, on October 13, 1912, declared war on this part of Turkish Europe, where in this case Serbia had as its goal the occupation and division of Albanian lands in Kosovo and Macedonia.
While Montenegro, created as an international legal entity, for the interests of Serbia and Russia, under the pretext of saving Orthodox Christians, was headed towards the annexation of Shkodra and the border up to the Mat River, and in the north-east extending up to Peja and Gjakova, this idea, according to Branko Babić, was projected in the head of Krajl Nikola and presented to the friendly Italian government as early as 1896.
In this case Austria-Hungary, based on the right of religious protocol, worked hard for an autonomous or independent Albania with borders as wide as possible, in order to prevent the more the expansion of the Slavic Orthodox states towards the western Balkans.
Montenegro, without the establishment of the military-police and administrative system in September 1912, began in the occupied territories, the campaign of collecting weapons in: Berane, Rozaje, Sandzak, Plave and Guci, Rugova, Peja, Gjakova, etc. During these actions, there were closures of Albanian schools, there were raids and burnings and looting of houses, people were threatened, killed, tortured, and displaced even to Turkey.
In this comprehensive action, with the directives of the Montenegrin government, the Monastery of Peja and the Metropolis of Cetina, the astonishing phenomenon of the Middle Ages was born, the forced conversion to the Serbian-Montenegrin Orthodox religion, of Catholics and Albanian Muslims, of Slavized Muslims, which was in open contradiction with paragraphs 27 and 35 of the Agreement of the Congress of Berlin.
Although the Kingdom of Montenegro had signed a Concordat with the Papacy in 1886, where in the introductory part, the full right of the Catholic faith is guaranteed, and Serbia was expected to sign the Concordat with the Papacy which was realized on June 24, 1914, the conversion of Catholics on the ground did not stop.
According to the researcher Zekeria Cana and some foreigners, the pressure of the Montenegrin authorities, at the end of 1912 and until the end of May 1913. on Catholics, was also due to the Montenegrin appetites to keep Shkodra occupied.
The Serbian and Montenegrin Orthodox Church, wrapped in excessive nationalism, caused Albanians to be baptized by taking new Slavic names and putting a “cap” on their heads as a visible sign of Montenegrin nationality. The witness teacher Zef Mark Harapi, taking the case in Peja and Rugova, states that all those who opposed the acceptance of the Orthodox faith and Slavization were liquidated before the eyes of the people gathered in designated squares for the publication of the events.
What the Albanian population of Rugova suffered from the Montenegrin army is best illustrated by the conversation that the London traveler Edith Durham, in 1913, had in Cetinje with General Janko Vukotic, who stated: that we defeated and killed all the men of Rugova.
In Peja and Rugova, 10,200 Albanian people were converted to Orthodoxy, among whom was a Hoxha and a priest. There were also conversions in Plav and Guci, where according to Mustafa Memić, 108 people had converted to the Orthodox faith, of whom 95 were Muslim Albanians and 14 were Catholics, while 240 were killed and 795 fled to Albania due to the violence. According to the Austrian press, 300 Catholics were baptized in Ulcinj, and then there were those in Rožaje, Berane, Pljevlja, Tuz, etc.
According to Branko Babić and the international press, the event that caused deep indignation and surprise in London diplomatic circles was the murder by the Montenegrin government, with a bayonet, of the Catholic cleric, Father Luigj Palić, who, together with 55 other Catholics, was shot on March 7, 1913, in Janoša, Gjakova, because they refused to convert to the Orthodox faith. According to researcher Babić, after this incident in Gjakova, 1,200 Catholics converted to Orthodoxy and many were displaced.
In addition, the Austrian press reports that, in Kosovo, after the departure of the Turks and the arrival of the new Serbian-Montenegrin invader, several hundred “Laramans” were forced to be baptized in the Orthodox Church. They asked to return to the Catholic Church, but the Serbian-Montenegrin authorities, not allowing this, told them “either Muslim or Orthodox, but not Catholic”. That the conversion of Albanians to Orthodoxy had indeed taken on large proportions in the occupied parts, is shown by the Minister of Internal Affairs in Cetinje, Jovan Pllamenac, in his telegram, no. 1658, dated 21. III. 1913, where he states that by the end of March, “about 5,000 Albanians had been baptized”.
Against this ugly act and the phenomenon of conversion to Orthodoxy carried out by the Montenegrin and Serbian governments, the Archbishop of Skopje, Lazër Mjeda, who administered Catholics from Ohrid, Skopje to Novi Pazar, had reacted strongly. Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian Government as the savior of the Albanians, together with the government of France, encouraged the London Conference, where on March 22, 1913, it brought the decision on the Concept of the protection and rights of Catholics in Montenegro. The same was emphasized at the conclusion of the London Conference on July 29, 1913.
As a sign of respect for all those who gave their lives for religion and homeland in these events, the Vatican on June 20, 2024, declared the cleric, Father Liugj Palić, a martyr of the Catholic Church. Conversion to Orthodoxy, which at the time meant changing the nationality of Albanians to Serbian or Montenegrin, had caused a great religious, social, political and national gap, the consequences of which the Albanian people and Albanians in general suffer to this day. Therefore, the phenomenon of forced conversion of religion or nationality, whether from Turkey or Montenegro or Serbia, should never be repeated.
Reference
Balkan Academia 