Florian Berisha, a Catholic clergyman, one of the signatories of the Statute of the Catholic Church of Albania (1951), passed away in Shkodër. He was born in Janjevë, Kosovo, in 1897. He completed his secondary studies in Shkodër. In 1919, he continued his studies at the Philosophical Faculty of Padova. After a year, due to health reasons, he returned to Shkodër, where he was assigned minor responsibilities in teaching and assistance. In 1923 he studied philosophy in Rome. A year later, he completed the fourth year of his master’s degree in Shkodër and resumed theology in Chieri, Turin. He returned to Albania and was ordained a priest in 1929 by the Apostolic Delegate, Monsignor Giovanbattista della Pietra. He was arrested in 1947. He was held for 13 months in the cells of Security, experiencing the most inhuman tortures, until he almost went mad. He was arrested again in 1958, but was not kept long because the captureres feared he would die. In recent years , together with Dom Ernest Çoba, he served as an assistant parish priest in the Cathedral of Shkodra. (In the photo: Florian Berisha)
Text: Encyclopedic dictionary of victims of communist terror – Vol. I , “West Print”, Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism, Tirana, 2012, page 175-176.
Photo: © Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism
Graphic processing: AHCF
