In Vlora, Catholic cleric Father Pjet\u00ebr M\u00ebshkalla passed away. Born in Shkod\u00ebr in 1901, he completed his primary and secondary education in his hometown, while his higher studies took him to Linz (Austria), Gorizia in Slovenia, and the Faculty of Philosophy in Naples (Italy). In 1931, he was ordained as a priest of the Society of Jesus in Shkod\u00ebr, where he taught literature, Albanian language, and philosophy at the Papal Seminary. In 1934, he founded the \u201cSaint John Bosco\u201d circle for youth education, and in 1937 continued with the \u201cSaint Peter\u201d circle in Tirana. In 1945, the communist regime sought his cooperation, but he not only refused, he openly denounced the regime during a ceremony for the death of Luigj Bum\u00e7i. For this, he was arrested in 1946. After a prolonged investigation, on April 18, 1947, the Tirana Garrison Military Court sentenced him to 15 years of imprisonment and hard labor, along with a five-year loss of civil rights, for his role as a founder of the \u201cNational Union\u201d organization and for agitation and propaganda. He served his sentence in various labor camps and in the Burrel prison, where he was released in 1961 but was prohibited from returning to his clerical duties. During the \u201cCultural Revolution\u201d in Shkod\u00ebr, he sent a letter to Mehmet Shehu, ending with: \u201cIn truth, not even the most enraged enemy of the government could have conducted a more hostile propaganda in 22 years than you have managed against yourselves.\u201d Consequently, on April 29, 1967, a meeting was held at the Shkod\u00ebr Pedagogical Institute to \u201cexpose\u201d his activities. On July 19 of that year, with decision no. 44, the Shkod\u00ebr Court sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment and confiscation of property for \u201cagitation and propaganda.\u201d After his release in 1978, he was exiled to a camp in Vlora. He is the first cleric to be honored as a \u201cTorchbearer of Democracy\u201d in 1992. (In the photo: Pjet\u00ebr M\u00ebshkalla)<\/p>\n
Text: <\/strong>*Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Victims of Communist Terror*, Vol. V, Institute for the Study of Communist Crimes and Consequences, \u201cWestPrint,\u201d Tirana, 2016, p. 338.<\/p>\n Photo: <\/strong>https:\/\/albemigrant2011.wordpress.com\/2022\/09\/09\/ate-pjeter-meshkalla-sj-1901-1988\/<\/p>\n Graphic Processing: <\/strong>AHCF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Vlora, Catholic cleric Father Pjet\u00ebr M\u00ebshkalla passed away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vdekje"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11322,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7786\/revisions\/11322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}