From the Depths of Hell I Saw Jesus on the Cross: A Priest in the Prisons of Communist Albania

The great merit of this very lively work is that it was written not by a journalist or an outside personality who knew Dom Simon Jubani, but by the victim himself. There is no other book of this quality on the subject.  Albania is a country little known abroad. Under the communist regime, it was forbidden to go there except in the framework of agreements and official exchanges between the Governments.  Of all the countries of Eastern Europe that have lived under the Communist yoke, this is the one where the persecution against the Catholic Church has been the most violent. It was led by Enver Hoxha, a brutal and bloodthirsty dictator trained in French universities. Albania was declared the world's first atheist State in 1967. All the churches were destroyed. In this book, Dom Simon Jubani recounts his life and twenty-six years spent in the communist prisons of Albania. He suffered so many acts of torture that he lost all his teeth. He heroically celebrated the first public Mass in Albania on November 4, 1990, which heralded the fall of the dictatorship the following year. Dom Simon Jubani was the most famous Albanian priest of his time, both at home and abroad. He was persecuted and thrown into prison under the communist Albanian regime for having celebrated baptisms. —Dominique Combette

The dissemination of Dom Simon Jubani’s testimony of faith, who was a priest in our Archdiocese during his lifetime, offers everyone with good will the possibility to discover or better know the terrible experience under Enver Hoxha’s communist dictatorship in Albania. Through the eyes of this priest, who was one of the most affirmed and well-known figures in our country and overseas, the reader will thoroughly understand what these years meant for our country. I sincerely hope that this publication will touch the souls and consciences of the greatest number of people possible so that history does not repeat the atrocities committed in Albania during the dictatorship. —✠ Archbishop Angelo Massafra, OFM, Metropolitan Archbishop of Shkodër-Pult