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Hysteria over Archbishop Anastasios

2025-01-28 22:10:00, Opinione Ardian Vehbiu

Opinion from Ardian Vehbiu!

I have been following these days things that have been written and said about the late Archbishop Janullatos.

I am not of the Orthodox faith, nor of any other religion – but I respect the Orthodox community in Albania, whether they are ethnic Albanians, ethnic Greeks, Vlachs, or other minorities, very much.

Not only because I respect their religion, but also because of what they represent in Albanian citizenship today.

I have not closely followed the activity of the archbishop, but I have judged him as the man whom the Orthodox community in Albania accepted as its leader for many years, and admired his work and words.

That is why I found this wave of contempt, which has swept public opinion, for a figure who has represented – with his identity and dignity – a major religious community in Albania, ugly.

The wave would have been equally ugly, even if it had been directed against an anonymous person; but this time it even touches on one of the fundamental conditions of our existence as citizens: religious coexistence.

I see the attacks against Janullatos coming under the pretext of "patriotism" - supposedly to protect the Albanianness of the Albanian autocephalous church. Even though they are not infrequently coming from people identified or identifiable as Muslims.

Perhaps anti-Hellenism, in Albania (in certain circles in Albania), is our “ethnic” response to anti-Albanianism in Greece (in certain circles in Greece); but even if that were the case, that does not make it any more acceptable.

I have noticed, for years, that this anti-Hellenism, in its most primitive forms, appears among communities that have never had anything to do with Orthodox Albanians – whether they are from our South or from central Albania.

As they have never had to deal, in life, nor have they given or taken with Vlachs or Greek minorities from the South.

They are closed, narrow, uninvolved people, unaccustomed to the Other and diversity, possessed by ethnic paranoia and other primitivisms. People who refuse to accept the good in the Other.

Even the anti-Turkish spirit that sometimes dominates the nationalist discourse in Greece and in general of the Christian communities in the Balkans, penetrating even to the edges of the discourse of the Orthodox community in Albania, is not enough for this current censure against a man who - I say this trusting people whose word and judgment I respect - served both the Orthodox community in Albania, and Albania itself, more strongly than he could have served Greece.

Moreover, by already insulting Orthodox Albanians and other Orthodox people living in Albania, we are risking bringing that community closer to extremist, anti-Albanian circles in Greece and elsewhere, who may be keenly interested in a division between religious communities in Albania.

And that could also come from the claim that these communities were willingly organized according to "patriotic" devotion – or to serve the Albanian national cause.

This is not so. Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics in Albania organize their respective communities themselves, in accordance with the constitution and other laws that govern their activities. They have no commitment to anyone, to wave the red and black flag today, as if they were in a stadium.

Looking at their work, they do good and serve me, and tens of thousands of others like me, who are not part of any religious community and do not want to identify as such.

Not only should patriotism, whether genuine or merely declared, not be confused with religious identity; but all those who elevate one community, over others, as more "patriotic" and more "devoted to the nation," should also be strongly opposed.

This folklore has already faded.

I wholeheartedly believe all those colleagues, friends and interlocutors who think that the departure of Archbishop Janullatos is a great loss for Orthodoxy in Albania; and not only because he was the head of a church and a religious community, but also as a figure with a high intellectual and moral profile.

I respect their pain and join them in mourning, and in the hope that the future archbishop will be able to continue, with his head held high, his sacred duty, in service to the community and all citizens in Albania. /CNA