Jul Bonati, a high-ranking Catholic cleric, General Vicar of Durrës and Vlora, was born in Shkodër. He completed his higher education in philosophy and literature in Austria and in Padua, Italy. He was ordained a priest in Gorizia (Italy) on April 8, 1906. He served as a priest in Padua, for fifteen years in Istanbul, ten years in Durres and three years in Vlora. He was arrested in Durrës on December 6, 1946, on the charge that “under the guise of religion, he played the role of propaganda against the National Liberation Movement; that he hated the communists to the core and was closely connected with famous spies, that during 1944 he traveled to Italy, is the right hand of the Italians and received instructions from the great master, the Pope; he stayed in Shkodra for over three weeks and received instructions from his fellow priests of Shkodra, for action against the People’s Government and especially against the communists; then he returned to Berat, where he stayed for a week and met a friend like himself, finished work and returned to Vlora, where he started the first wave and sought to prepare another network for agitation and propaganda against the People’s Government. That’s why Bonati and his friends were the most dangerous spies of the People’s Government”. He was inhumanely tortured. To torture him even more, he was locked up in the Durrës asylum, where on May 5, 1951 he was massacred by the insane. (In the photo: Jul Bonati)
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 196.
Photo: © Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism
Graphic processing: AHCF
