"Without HECE, KOASH would go bankrupt"/ Archbishop Joan: His Beatitude Anastasius made autocephaly a condition for the Patriarchate

2025-10-23 08:47:00, Aktualitet CNA

"Without HECE, KOASH would go bankrupt"/ Archbishop Joan: His

The Archbishop of Tirana, Durrës and all of Albania, His Beatitude Joani, in an interview given for the Opinion show with journalist Blendi Fevziu, answered the question of whether Archbishop Anastas' ethnicity damaged the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Albania.

Archbishop Joan said that the late Archbishop Anastasios strengthened autocephaly through the construction of HECEs, as without them the KOASH would have gone bankrupt.

Journalist Blendi Fevziu : Did his Greek affiliation damage Albanian autocephaly?

Archbishop Joan: Maybe often in the media, but the work he did strengthened autocephaly. If he had not done the great work with HECE for the church, we would have gone bankrupt today, this was a work to preserve the autocephaly of Albania and when the Archbishop who was sent by the Patriarchate came first, he set some conditions: one of the conditions was that autocephaly should not be violated because some theologians had come out in Greece who said that the church does not exist and that Autocephaly is over.

Fevziu : So it has fulfilled its mission since the Berat Congress and onwards.

Archbishop Joan said that one of the conditions that Archbishop Anastasios set for the Patriarchate was the construction of a solid local church and not a colony, as without it being solid there would be no future and autocephaly would not be violated.

Archbishop Joan : One of the conditions that Archbishop Anastasios set was this because in his vision he understood that if a solid local church was not built, there would be no future for that thing. In the last interview he gave in Greece, he said exactly this: “I did not go there (to Albania) to build a colony, but to build a Church.”

In Greece, the majority of the people honor and worship him, but there were people who did not find him as Greek as they thought he was.

Fevziu: Normal because there are radicals, for Albanians it wasn't Albanian enough, for Greeks it wasn't Greek enough and this happens often.

Archbishop Joan: The work shows.

Archbishop Joan also commented on Archbishop Anastas's background and said that his mother bore the surname Malltezi, who were originally from Preveza, but could not give an answer about his ethnicity.

Fevziu: Is it true that he was of Albanian origin on his mother's side? Because in the CV published by the church it says that he comes from the Malltezi family?

Archbishop Joan: The Malltezi are from Preveza, it's possible they were, I can't say what they were.

While speaking about the figure of Archbishop Anastasios, His Beatitude Joan said that he was a compassionate man who listened to everyone's problems, a man who was consistent in his work.

Fevziu: How was your daily life?

Archbishop Joan: Archbishop Anastasios was a deep, compassionate man, he tried to understand everyone's needs to fulfill them, but at the same time he was also consistent in his work./ CNA