t the only religion for an
Albanian should be Albanianism, he assigned the antireligious mission to
the youth movement. By May of the same year religious institutions were
forced to relinquish 2,169 churches, mosques, cloisters, and shrines,
most of which were converted into cultural centers for young people. As
the literary monthly _Nendori_ (November) in its September 1967 issue
reported the event, the youth had thus "created the first atheist nation
in the world."

According to Western correspondents in Tirana, the procedure employed in
seizing the places of worship was to assemble the villagers or
parishioners in order to discuss Hoxha's speech and to take measures to
eliminate what the regime referred to as harmful survivals of religious
customs. A decision was then taken to ask the government for permission
to close a church, mosque, or monastery. A few days later the
government, stating that it was following the will of the people, would
issue orders to close the house of worship.

Drastic measures were reportedly taken in cases where the clergy opposed
the government order. The strongest resistance came from the Catholic
clergy, resulting in the detention of some twenty priests. The cloister
of the Franciscan order in Shkoder was set afire in the spring of 1967,
resulting in the death of four monks. The Catholic cathedral in Tirana
had its facade removed, and on June 4, 1967, it was taken over by the
government and converted into a museum. A similar fate befell the
Catholic cathedrals in Shkoder and Durres.

After the seizure of the houses of worship, the younger clergymen were
forced to seek work either in industry or agricultural collectives. The
elder clergy were ordered to return to their birthplaces, which they
could not leave without permission from the authorities. Monsignor
Ernest Coba, bishop of Shkoder and acknowledged head of the Catholic
church in Albania, was evicted from the cathedral in April 1967 and was
forced to seek work as a gardener on a collective farm. He was still
alive but ailing at the end of 1969.

By the beginning of 1970 the provision of the Constitution concerning
freedom of religion was ostensibly in effect, but government decrees had
made such a provision a dead issue. On November 22, 1967, a significant
measure was taken that apparently aimed at delivering the coup de grace
to formal religious institutions. On that day _Gazeta Zyrtare_, the
government's official gazette, publ