On April 23, 1682 , in the village of Hora e Arbëreshëve in Sicily (it. Piana degli Albanesi), Gjergj Guxeta (Guzzeta), the founder of the Greek-Albanian Seminary of Palermo, was born in 1734. After the first years of school in his hometown, he continued his studies in Trapani, at the Jesuit college, where his older brother, Serafini, was also present. He entered the seminary of the archdiocese of Monreale, received his doctorate in theology and was kept in the Curia by Archbishop Francesco Del Giudice, as a translator of classical Greek. On December 5, 1706, with papal permission, he entered the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in Palermo and, on December 22, 1707, he was ordained a priest, passing from the byzantine rite to the Latin one. During the first years of his service, he devoted himself to preaching in Italian and Albanian. With the aim of preserving and protecting the cultural and religious traditions of the Arbëresh communities of the byzantine rite, in 1734 he founded the first Greek-Albanian Seminary in Palermo, for the formation of the clergy of the Arbëresh areas. Always in Hora e Arbëreshëve, together with his brother Father Antonio Brancato, he founded the College of Mary for the education of girls, for catechism in the Albanian and Italian languages and for liturgical celebrations in the Greek and Albanian languages. Father Guxeta laid the foundations of the construction of Arbëresh culture, where the Albanian language and traditions were kept intact in Sicily. In his school, almost the entire intelligentsia of the Arbëresh of the island was educated in a spirit that fully agreed with the religious and cultural heritage of the fatherland. He is well known by Albanians as a priest who, with his writings, raised his voice in defense of the nation; as the one who provided the means for the establishment of the Palermo Seminary, which would become one of the main centers of Albanian culture and patriotism, the cradle of a constellation of outstanding writers and poets, all catholics. (In the photo: Gjergj Guxeta)
Text: https://www.vaticannews.va/
Photo: © https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gjergji_Guxeta
Graphic processing: AHCF
