Ernest Simoni

Ernest Simoni was born in Troshani, Albania, on 18 October 1928. He entered the Franciscan college at ten; when Hoxha's regime closed it in 1948 he continued his studies in secret and was ordained a priest on 7 April 1956 in Shkodër. On Christmas Eve 1963, after celebrating Mass for the repose of the assassinated US President John F. Kennedy, he was arrested. Sentenced to death, he had the sentence commuted — and spent eighteen years in prison and forced labour in the mines of Spaç, saying Mass from memory in Latin and hearing confessions in secret: “I risked my life each time. If they had found me, they would have hanged me immediately.” Sentenced to death a second time in 1973 for allegedly inciting rebellion, he was spared by fellow prisoners' testimony; released in 1981, he was still branded an “enemy of the people” and worked in Shkodër's sewers, ministering clandestinely until the regime fell in 1990.

On 21 September 2014 his testimony before Pope Francis in Tirana moved the Pope to tears: “Today we have touched martyrs,” Francis said. Francis created him a cardinal on 19 November 2016 — at eighty-eight, a working parish priest, dispensed from episcopal consecration — with the deaconry of Santa Maria della Scala. He concluded his 2016 testimony: “The Lord has helped me to serve so many people and to reconcile many, driving hatred and the devil away from the hearts of men.” In July 2026 he returned to Spaç prison to celebrate Mass for the prisoners buried there in nameless graves; Pope Leo XIV wrote to him on his 97th birthday. His motto is Zemra jeme dotë triumfojë — “my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”