Pope Benedict XVI has accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Sali Berisha to visit Albania in the near future, a press release from the Albanian Council of Ministers said on Friday.Berisha extended the invitation when he had an audience with the pope, as part of a delegation of centre-right parties at the Holy Father’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.
The pontiff expressed the hope that his visit would take place in the near future.Berisha is on a two-day visit to Rome where he is attending a conference of conservative and right-of-centre parties, as the head of the Albanian Democratic Party.
Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, was the first pope to visit Albania in 1993, only two years after the collapse of half-a-century of communist rule, during which Albania became the world’s first self-proclaimed atheist state.
A symbol of the struggle against the Iron Curtain, the Polish pope was acclaimed by hundreds of thousands of Albanians during his visit, though the country has a Muslim majority.
Addressing a mass audience in Tirana’s central Scanderbeg square with Pope John Paul II at his side, Berisha – at the time Albania’s president - described the then pontiff as a major force in the collapse of communism.
According to estimates, around 10 per cent of Albanians are Catholics.
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