Albania: Help for a 4WD vehicle for the Franciscan sisters in Fushe-Arrez

Sister Bernadette taking care for a baby. @ACN
Sister Bernadette taking care for a baby. @ACN

Two German Franciscan nuns, Sister Gratias Ruf and Sister Bernadette Ebenhoch have been working since 1997 in the mountains of northern Albania, more precisely in the small town of Fushe-Arrez, around 85 miles (130 km) north of Tirana. Even during the warlike years of the 1990s the sisters stayed on bravely here, following the collapse of the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, when almost everybody carried a weapon. Especially between 1997 and 1999, Albania was enveloped in crisis, when the banks collapsed and the population reacted with explosive aggression. In their rage at being left without help by the state, many of them went about systematically destroying public buildings. In order to avoid the rampant corruption in the towns, the Sisters managed to obtain help from donors so that they could build up their wide ranging aid programmes. Here in the mountainous regions of northern Albania most people are dependent on outside help, living in extreme poverty and almost devoid of hope in the future. Communism undermined their sense of independence, and little or nothing has been done since to help them come to terms with the past, or still less to compensate them for the loss of their personal possessions.

The Catholic Church in Albania faces a massive challenge in the fact that only the 65-100 year olds have experienced a real Catholic social environment. On top of this, many Albanians are now leaving their homes in the hope of being able to support them from the big cities or from abroad. Especially the people of these mountainous regions have fled into the big cities. The family is the core of Albanian society and the most important cohesive force, and migration destroys the family. And so the Church is attempting to make up for the lack of family cohesion through her own pastoral outreach.

Sister Gratias and Sister Bernadette are also trying to strengthen the sense of cohesion and faith among the Albanian mountain people. Over many years they have built up a pastoral and charitable centre in Fushe-Arrez that is today able to reach a great many people in the area. „Our activities include a large kindergarten with over 50 children, a medical aid station and dispensary, which also supplies baby food, a twice monthly food distribution to the poorest families, the aid goods which we pass on to those in need, our sewing school, which over 20 women attend, a number of building projects in the poorer mountain villages of the region, house visits to the socially deprived and the poorest families, helping with the catechetical work in the parish of St Joseph in Fushe-Arrez and in the surrounding villages, and much much more besides", the Sisters write.

In the kindergarten the nursery assistants look after children whose parents are in most cases unemployed or whose families are threatened by blood feuds. These children, aged from one to six, get three meals a day, along with daylong care in a loving Christian environment. The primary and secondary schoolchildren, like the women and girls who attend the sewing school, take part once a week in the catechism classes given by the Sisters. In this remote and forgotten region there is no work; the people are very poor and live in archaic conditions. The sisters help with hygiene courses for expectant mothers so that they can better feed and care for their children. They help the poorest families in the inaccessible mountain villages to repair their homes. And every person who comes to the sisters is given a cross, with the message on it "Pray and walk on, for God is at the end of your journey".

What the Sisters now urgently need, however, is a new four wheel drive vehicle, for up here in the mountains they have to negotiate hairpin bends, dirt roads and mountain streams. They simply cannot manage without a robust, off-road vehicle. When it rains, large rocks sometimes come rolling down the mountain slopes. As one of the sisters writes, "The roads and tracks in Albania are bad. We often have to travel long distances, for example to Tirana, Shkoder, Lac-Vaudejes, etc. But even here, in the immediate vicinity, we need this vehicle so that we can reach the villages easily".

 ACN has given a contribution of €5,000. The sisters responded quickly. "We thank you with all our hearts for helping our work in the mountain regions in this way, and at the same time for giving a sign to the people in these scattered villages that they have not been forgotten."

This vehicle is only a small contribution in the face of the great need in this country, the poorhouse of Europe. Yet it will be of enormous help to the sisters in their work.

To know about this and many other similar projects in favour of the pastoral needs of the suffering Church, please contact our national offices.