TIRANA, Albania — Albania’s Orthodox Church on Sunday elected Joan Pelushi as its new chief following the demise in January of Archbishop Anastasios, who had revived the church after the autumn of communism in 1990.
After a 40-minute assembly, the bells rang to notice that the seven-member Holy Synod elected Joan, the metropolitan of Korca, because the archbishop of Tirana, Durres and all of Albania and in addition head of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania. Two metropolitans amongst them had been excluded on account of their Greek citizenship, according to the statute of the church.
“I humbly settle for this excessive service and promise to faithfully perform my responsibility,” Joan stated earlier than signing the choice of the synod. He earlier led Mass on the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in downtown Tirana.
The Orthodox Church of Albania was declared autocephalous in September in 1922, after it had been subordinated to the archbishopric of Ohrid and the patriarchate of Constantinople.
Joan Pelushi, 69, labored on the Tirana Psychiatric Hospital till 1990, when the communist management collapsed. He studied in america on the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Faculty of Theology.
In 1994 he returned to Albania and have become a priest and lectured on the church’s Theology College. Following extra research on the identical college in Boston, in 1998 Joan turned metropolitan of Korca, which additionally included the southeastern districts of Pogradec, Devoll and Kolonje, near Greece.
Joan has translated and revealed many spiritual books. He has represented the nation in worldwide non secular actions and has lectured on theology, historical past and philosophy.
“His contribution will not be legitimate solely in cultural, scientific and humanitarian areas, but additionally in strengthening the coexistence, inter-religious dialogue and patriotic training,” the church wrote.
All types of faith had been banned in Albania for 23 years beginning in 1967, when the nation was utterly remoted from the skin world and the communists seized the property of Islamic, Orthodox, Catholic and different church buildings.
Joan is the sixth head of the Albanian Orthodox Church.
In line with the 2023 census, Orthodox Christians in Albania make up about 7% of the nation’s 2.4 million inhabitants, though the church says the precise quantity is larger. Half the inhabitants of the Western Balkan nation identifies as Muslim, with Orthodox and Catholic Christians making up a lot of the rest.
