Dom Simon Jubani (8 March 1927 – 12 July 2011) was a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

priest and Albanian political prisoner confined in

Burrel Prison Burrel Prison () is a high security prison located outside the town of Burrel, in northeastern Albania at the District Police Station in Mat with a maximum capacity of 198 inmates. In 2011 the prison housed 182 inmates and employed 120 corrections ...

for 26 years during the regime of

Enver Hoxha Enver Halil Hoxha ( , ; 16 October 190811 April 1985) was an Albanian communist politician who was the authoritarian ruler of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985. He was First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1941 unt ...

Early career and imprisonment

Jubani, brother of Dom Lazer who was poisoned in 1982, was born in

Shkodër Shkodër ( , ; sq-definite, Shkodra) is the fifth-most-populous city of the Republic of Albania and the seat of Shkodër County and Shkodër Municipality. The city sprawls across the Plain of Mbishkodra between the southern part of Lake Shkod ...

, a city in Northwestern Albania with a large Catholic population, to a devoted Catholic family and entered seminary in 1943. He was ordained in 1958 and then arrested in 1963 while serving at the Abbey of Mirëdita, in a nearby province, for practicing the Catholic religion. In Burrel Prison he was kept in a 12 by 24 foot cell with 30 other prisoners and beaten brutally when he refused to work in the mines. Practicing religion in Albania became illegal in 1967 and many religious leaders were tortured, killed, or imprisoned for practicing their faith publicly. Dom Simon wrote a memoir of his time in prison, titled "Burgjet e mia".

After release

Jubani was released on 13 April 1989, along with other imprisoned Catholic priests. On 11 November 1990, Jubani celebrated the first public

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

since the fall of Hoxha's regime, defying the law. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

in 1991, honored as a "Protagonist of a new era in Albania." Jubani died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 12 July 2011 at the Regional Hospital in Shkodër. Ndahet nga jeta Dom Simon Jubani
, ''Balkanweb.com - Kulturë''.

Publications

* ''Du fond de l'enfer, j'ai vu Jésus en croix'', Éditions Docteur angélique, 2021

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jubani, Dom Simon 1927 births Prisoners and detainees of Albania 20th-century Albanian Roman Catholic priests People from Shkodër Albanian memoirists 2011 deaths Albanian prisoners and detainees