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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2008 /  Priest recalls past dangers as Kosovo celebrates independence

by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 29, 2008

Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic Fr. Anton Kçira, a native of Kosovo, is administrator of St. Paul (Albanian) Parish in Rochester Hills.

Rochester Hills – Kosovo's declaration of independence sparked rejoicing among local Albanian-Americans, but especially among those such as Fr. Anton Kçira who are from there.

Sensing he was in danger from the Serbian police, Fr. Kçira escaped from Kosovo – then a part of the former Yugoslavia — in 1989 and came to Detroit. He later found out the police had already been given orders to arrest, beat and torture him for starting new Catholic churches without government permission and for speaking out against police killings from the pulpit.

The embattled mostly Albanian enclave of Kosovo – or Kosava, as the Albanians spell it — declared its independence from Serbia Feb. 17, and has since been recognized by the United States and several European countries.

Asked how he felt on hearing the news of Kosovo's independence declaration, Fr. Kçira replied, "I don't have words for that. Can you imagine how you'd feel if, after years of oppression by a people who want to punish you or kill you, now you are in your own free country?"

He compared it to his feelings after first arriving in the United States: "When I came here, I thought I was touching the freedom!"

Fr. Kçira, 68, hosted a Mass of Thanksgiving Feb. 17 at St. Paul (Albanian) Church in Rochester Hills, where he is administrator. "It was a Mass of Thanksgiving to God, and to the United States and NATO, and to all those who suffered and died for Kosovo since 1913," he said Wednesday.

About 1,100 people attended the Mass and reception that followed it, including representatives of the local Albanian Orthodox and Bektashi Muslim communities.

"I lived for 50 years in Kosovo, 23 years as a priest. It was very hard to be there in those last years. Serbia controlled everything," he recalled.

Fr. Kçira said he was frequently stopped by the police who would ask abusive questions and make accusations. "They wanted to challenge you, then if you got angry, they would have an excuse to beat you," he said.

In the summer of 1989, Fr. Kçira's bishop received a letter from the papal nuncio asking him to send a priest to the Archdiocese of Detroit. When asked if he would go, Fr. Kçira declined, "because I had heard bad things about Detroit."

But after another run-in with the police, he figured he was heading for even bigger trouble and asked his bishop if he could leave immediately.

That turned out to be a fortunate decision. "I did not know it at the time, but 10 police cars were looking for me," he said.

Fr. Kçira was put in charge of St. Paul Parish, which was then a 50-family parish in Warren. By the time its new church and parish complex was built in Rochester Hills in 2002, parish membership had grown to about 1,800 families.

But many of those families had immigration-status difficulties, and a combination of deportations and flight to avoid deportation over the past few years has reduced membership to about 1,100 families.

Of about 150,000 Albanians in metro Detroit, about 30,000 are Catholics. But most of those are from Albania proper or from the Greater Mountains area of Montenegro. Perhaps about 300 families are from Kosovo, Fr. Kçira speculated.

Most Albanians are Muslims, and this is especially true in Kosovo, where Fr. Kçira estimated only about 3 percent of its 1.9 million population are Catholics.

But Christian and Muslim Albanians have traditionally gotten on well together, and Fr. Kçira said he hopes that will continue in the future. He acknowledged, however, that many Albanian Muslims had grown stricter in their practice of their faith in recent years, largely because of missionary influence from Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia.

"I hope there will be peace," Fr. Kçira said.

St. Paul parishioner Donika Prenkolaj was only 4 years old when she left her native Kosovo. But the now 17-year-old Stevenson High School student is as excited as any other Kosovar about the latest developments from her homeland.

"It was like a dream come true. People can live free now; there's no more worrying if there's going to be another war," said Prenkolaj, who lives with her parents, Nikoll and Gjuka, in Sterling Heights.

Prenkolaj said she hopes all Kosovars will be able to live together in peace, and that the country's economy will begin to generate jobs.

Despite leaving at such an early age, Prenkolaj said she does have memories of Kosovo: "I'm sure if I were to go back, I could find my house."

But it is not just Kosovars who are celebrating Kosovo's independence, but other ethnic Albanians as well.

"It's a miraculous thing to have happened. I've wanted to see this happen since I was a teenager," said Kanto Dushaj, director of religious education at St. Paul Parish.

Dushaj, 51, was born in the Greater Mountains region of Montenegro and came to the United States when he was 17. An educator with the Warren Consolidated Schools, he is active with his parish and in the local Albanian community.

"This is a significant event for ethnic Albanians all over the world. The Serbs have been aggressive, they want to dominate you, and have treated Albanians like we were less than dirt," he said.

Although Serbia and Russia are objecting to the declaration of independence, and Spain is also opposed, the new nation has the support of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany, Dushaj continued.

"Russia and Serbia may try to stop it, but they won't succeed – this is a done deal," he said.