08/31/2026
**All are invited to celebrate Holy Mass with Albanian Cardinal Ernest Simoni at St. Eugene Church on Sunday, September 20th at 4:00 p.m. After Mass, all are invited for hospitality and light appetizers, with an opportunity to greet the Cardinal. **
The 97-year-old cardinal survived the prisons and forced labor of the Communist regime and remains a living witness to the faith. Cardinal Troshan was arrested on Christmas Eve 1963, after celebrating Mass for President John F. Kennedy. Under the brutal communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, which would eventually declare Albania the world’s first officially atheist state, Simoni was interrogated, tortured and initially sentenced to death.
The sentence was later commuted, and he spent 18 years imprisoned and subjected to forced labor, including years at the notorious Spaç prison camp.
But they could not make him abandon Christ.
Inside the camp, Simoni secretly celebrated the Holy Mass from memory because he had no Missal. Bread and wine were smuggled to him, and he quietly heard confessions and ministered to fellow prisoners despite the danger of being discovered.
When Pope Francis visited Albania in 2014 and heard Simoni recount what he had endured, the Pope was visibly moved to tears and embraced him. Pope Francis called him a "living witness of forgiveness" and made him a cardinal in 2016. Pope Francis would later publicly call him a “living martyr.”
And then, on July 31, 2026, Cardinal Simoni returned to Spaç.
At 97 years old, he stood at the former communist prison camp and publicly celebrated the same Eucharist he had once been forced to celebrate there in secret.
Pope Leo XIV sent him a message for the occasion:
“No prison is deep enough to separate a person from the love of God.”
