The Orthodox Church of Albania

The Orthodox Church in Albania only began to develop independently in the 20th century. Prior to this, the Orthodox Albanians were fully integrated into the Greek-speaking Orthodox Church: The liturgical language was Greek and most of the bishops of the Albanian Church came from Greece. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that an Albanian national consciousness developed. When an independent Albanian state was successfully established after the First World War, the desire for an independent Orthodox Church quickly emerged. In September 1922, the Albanian Orthodox Church declared itself autocephalous and appointed a bishop ordained in Yugoslavia as its leader. After several attempts at mediation failed, the Albanian Church gave itself its own statute in 1929, consecrated further bishops with Serbian support and established its own synod of bishops. In 1937, the Ecumenical Patriarchate recognized the autocephaly of the Albanian Orthodox Church.

After the communists came to power in 1945, the Orthodox Church, like all religious groups in Albania, suffered extreme persecution. The communist rulers in Albania consistently destroyed all church structures. It was only after the fall of the communist regime in 1991 that church life was able to develop again in Albania. Since not a single Albanian bishop had survived communist rule, the Ecumenical Patriarchate appointed the respected Greek theologian Anastasios Yannoulatos as head of the Orthodox Church in Albania in 1991. In June 1992, three more bishops were consecrated for Albania and an independent synod was constituted. In 1998, for the first time since communist rule, two Albanians were consecrated bishops again. The Orthodox Albanians are mainly at home in the south of the country. Archbishop Anastasios, who still heads the Albanian Orthodox Church today, is one of the most committed representatives of the Orthodox Church in the ecumenical movement.