By Visar Zhiti
Meeting once again with Pope
Francis, shaking hands with His Holiness, staring into each other’s eyes, gilded
by the goodness of His vision in which heavenly elation mixes with the
dedication of a compassionate shepherd, exchanging a few words with him, he
immediately says what you really need, and though these moments close to him
are very brief, they pour a sense of biblical eternity into you... Along that
minute passageway, where you started to walk off from the side where the
diplomatic corps is set, you approach Him, waiting on his feet, white, candle-like,
ethereal, you also feel Him to be an old friend, special emotions and a beautiful
responsibility grab you, superb.
You are heading towards Him as
an Albanian citizen, a representative of your country, carrying with you centuries
of testimonies, Buzukian
liturgical whispers, and as you cast another step, instead of adorning your
breast with medals that others surrounding you have plenty of, you fill your
chest with the pain of the wounds of your country’s martyrs, carrying Fishta
and his “Lute of Highland" in English, along with the images of two
Albanian cardinals, whom you have been accompanied by in the dictatorship’s
hell, and they shoulder you on both sides, you continue to walk, dazzled by the
magical smiles of our saint, Mother Teresa, spreading throughout the air like doves’
wings, another step, and the revamped walls of temples quake, the Onufrian
cardinal red icons move, you feel the proverbial brotherhood allegiance among
religions in your country, present-day distresses suffocate you, your step
heavies, your personal tragedy weighs on your shoulders, while, underfoot the
wickedness of those who enacted it emerge like traps – assassins’ offspring, insults,
your steps are confused by the slurs of the presidential clan of the republic
of banality, the sad silence of your people, their exodus, the Sisyphean stone
of torment, the love of those who only know how to love, etc., the patron
hermit angel that leads the generation of the fatherland, O’ resurgent angels where are you?...
Meanwhile, you have arrived
before Pope Francis, stopped there, bowing slightly... His Holiness was waiting
for you, staring at you, immediately understands you, he shake hands with you, his
hands that thousands of people from all over the world have held, nameless and
famous, from your country too, children and the elderly, poor men, artists,
statesmen from all the continents, heads of religions, etc., etc., those hands with
which he has washed the feet of prisoners of all kinds, the feet of the
miserable, of deprived, murdered men, the journey of humanity, but now he is
with you, for you all, and you feel the need to say something in the name of
what you are, that you have not said before. I love Albania he says to you once
again, but sounding new, special, his voice reminds you, His sacred masses, and
you, heartened, say to him that as much as Your Holiness and the Holy See have
done last year and now for Albanians and their church, etc., was not done for
1,000 years, 2,000 years, and he laughs out loud, we are grateful to you, you
add, and he stretches out his hands and strongly holds yours, and you feel the apostolic
warmth of the strongest moral leader of the world.
You would like to have continued
to say that the world has become better because of Him, but you have to leave and
let the next person from another country, meet with him, yet your wife, like a
Mary dressed in black, completes what was left unsaid by embracing Pope Francis,
and as you leave, you see the vision of the Son, Christ in Heaven, through Michelangelo’s
large windows. Amen!
AAFH translation
