The difference between a patriot and a nationalist/ His Beatitude Joan: Love for the country without hatred for others

2025-11-27 11:12:00, Aktualitet CNA

The difference between a patriot and a nationalist/ His Beatitude Joan: Love for

Archbishop Joan

His Beatitude Joan, in an interview with the media Ngjallja, in the context of the November holidays, explained the difference between patriotism and nationalism, emphasizing that love for one's country should not turn into hatred towards others.

Archbishop Joan emphasizes that a patriot is one who loves his country and strives to develop and prosper it, without the need to despise other nations. While a nationalist, he often understands this love for his country as superiority over others, based on selfishness and contempt, which can become dangerous.

To illustrate this, Archbishop Joan also mentioned the example of the Nazis, who under the sign of nationalism exercised hatred that manifested itself within and outside their nation.

His Beatitude expressed that true patriotism does not exclude love for all humanity, and sees it as the duty of every citizen to love and advance their country, contributing to its prosperity and development.

He also recalled the figures of the Renaissance, who, according to him, were examples of true patriotism, dedicated to the freedom and independence of the country.

Archbishop Joan's main message is that love of country is a duty to God, nation, and homeland, but it must always be accompanied by respect and love for all humanity.

"This is a slightly more complicated topic, but it also depends on what people understand by the word patriot and what they understand by the word nationalist. In a general sense, it can be more or less said in this way: a patriot is someone who loves his country and focuses precisely on the love for the country and the prosperity of that country, while a nationalist has taken on the meaning of opposition to other nations, whether neighboring nations or nations further away.

The exaltation of your nation and the oppression and contempt of other nations can become something dangerous, because, if hatred is ignited in the soul, the same people who perhaps think they are only hating others, they also hate the people of their own nation. The Nazis were nationalists. Their party was even called National Socialist.

No doubt they had hatred for many other nations, but that hatred manifested itself in their own nation and millions of Germans were persecuted and killed, tortured by all, because in the human heart, love and hate cannot exist at the same time.

If we have love for our country, there is certainly no need to hate others. He who loves his country makes it flourish. Hatred for others will begin and spread to your country and to other people. Nationalism is based on selfishness.

Someone says: Germany above all, someone says our country first and various forms like these, but this is based only on selfishness. True patriotism does not exclude all humanity from love. The patriot tries to value his country, help it develop and prosper. Nationalist - depends on the terms, because in Albanian it does not give this complete meaning, in Albanian the word "nationalism" has often had the meaning of patriotism.

The nationalists of the Renaissance were not nationalists just to oppose others, but they were patriots and perhaps the best term for them is to be called patriots, people who loved their country and spared nothing; they spent their wealth and everything they had, both material and spiritual, to give the country independence and to make it flourish. Today, our duty is precisely to continue in this line: Let us love our country! If we make our country flourish, we have undoubtedly fulfilled our duty before God, before the nation and before the homeland", said Archbishop Joan./ CNA