In Laç, Vau i Dejës, where his family, one of the oldest in Shkodra, had settled during the siege of the city by the Montenegrins, Monsignor Ernest M. Çoba was born, a senior Catholic cleric, Secretary General of the Presidency of the Catholic Church of Albania, Chairman of the Catholic Church of Albania (1957). He completed his primary and secondary education at the Saverian College and the Papal Seminary in Shkodër. He completed higher studies in theology and philosophy. On February 9, 1936, he was ordained a priest by the apostolic delegate and administrator of the Archdiocese of Shkodra, Monsignor Giovani della Pietra SJ, and two days later he held his first mass. He served in various positions at the Pontifical Seminary and as a faith teacher among the city’s schools (1938–1946). On March 19, 1936, he was elected assistant parish priest of Shkodra. In the years ’46-’52 he was provicar of the Archdiocese of Shkodra and vicar of the city. After the death of Monsignor Gaspër Thaçi, the arrest of Dom Mikel Koliqi and the death of Dom Tomë Laca, he was entrusted with all the duties of the service in the Cathedral Church of Shkodra. On January 21, 1952, he was appointed titular bishop of Midaeum: he was ordained on April 20 of the same year by the Bishop of Pulti and by the President of the Catholic Church of Albania, Monsignor Bernardin Shllaku. From that time until November 9, 1956, when Monsignor Shllaku died, he served as the General Secretary of the Presidency of the Catholic Church of Albania, and from November 9, 1956 until March 21, 1957, that of its president. During this time, with the help of his sister, he maintained secret relations with the Holy See through the Italian Legation in Tirana. Every time the sister went to the Legation to receive her Italian husband’s pension, she also delivered Monsignor’s materials written on cigarette papers. For this reason, he was arrested on April 29, 1976. A full year later, on April 29, 1977, the District Court of Shkodra, on the charge of “treason against the homeland and agitation and propaganda against people’s power”, sentenced him to 25 years of imprisonment, deprivation of liberty, confiscation of property and deprivation of electoral rights for 5 years. He served his sentence in Tirana prison, where he died mysteriously, after an injection which given to him in the prison hospital, on January 8, 1980. (In the photo: Ernest Çoba)
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 253-254.
Photo: © Xhoxhi L., personal archive
Graphic processing: AHCF
