Modern missionaries bring faith back to an ancient post-Communist country stripped of spirit and hope
“Light a Candle: A Memoir, A Special Assignment in Albania,” by Sister Lourdes Fernandez, MM, self-published, 2021
Reviewed by Donna Estomago
Special to the Herald
Sister Lourdes Fernandez, MM
“Our apostles to Albania, Lourdes Fernandez, Winifred O’Donnell, Vivian Votruba and Gertrude Gallagher, were following the Apostle Paul who planted the seeds of the Gospel in Illyricum, the ancient kingdom in the Balkans that is now part of Albania, as far back as 66 AD (Romans 15:19). This memoir is a labor of love by Lourdes Fernandez who spent 18 years in mission in Albania. It testifies to the courage and creativity that was required to witness to the Gospel in a land that had known violence and conquest for thousands of years. Not only does it contain a wealth of historical and political information, but it also reveals a form of mission outreach not unlike that of the early church where everything was new and untested.” (Sister Janice McLaughlin, MM, from the foreword for “Light a Candle: A Memoir, a Special Assignment in Albania”)
The Maryknoll Sisters came to Pogradec, a small town in southern Albania, a country in southeastern Europe northwest of Greece, in February 1995 in response to a call from the U.S. Bishops Conference for volunteers from religious communities to assist people learning to walk in freedom and to rebuild the church following the fall of Communism in that country.
Maryknoll affiliate Veronica Gilligan was convinced her community belonged there. “Hundreds of years of domination followed by the tightest years of isolation under (prime minister Enver) Hoxha’s communist reign in Albania left the people without spirit — without hope,” she says on page 59 of Sister Fernandez intriguing 136-page volume.
The sisters arrived in the winter and their first morning in their new home in a town surrounded by mountains found them breaking through the ice of their pump well in the yard. They would gather fresh snow in the morning to wash dishes and for a sponge bath. This breaking through the ice was an apt analogy for a mission that had to break through years of a frozen reality of spirit without God.
The Maryknoll Sisters’ missionary presence was to accompany the Albanians searching for identity and the meaning of freedom. An explosive civil uprising in 1997 did not deter the first baptism ceremony in their little church of St. Joseph the Worker. “The darkness and ugliness of gunfire surrounded us but in our hearts was a fire of joy and love,” Sister Fernandez recalls.
The core Christian community of young men and women the Maryknoll Sisters attracted made promises to be “little candles,” missionaries themselves, wherever life took them, which turned out to be far and wide across the globe. The moving testimonies of these new Christians, whose faith continues to spread beyond Pogradec, fill nine pages at the end of the book.
This book is rightly dedicated to them, whom the author calls the “third millennium early Christians of St Joseph the Worker Church in Pogradec.”
Come along with Sister Fernandez, who completed her special mission presence in three Albanian towns in 2013, and experience the ignition of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of people who were living in a state of total atheism and in the tomb of isolation from the rest of humanity in four decades.
Like an archaeologist, Sister Fernandez felt like she was unearthing a Christian heritage deeply buried in the heart of the Albanian soul and soil.
Maryknoll Sister Lourdes Fernandez currently lives with other Maryknoll Sisters in Kailua, Oahu. To obtain a copy of her book, contact her at 633-0715, or Flourdes077@gmail.com
Donna Estomago is a religious educator and active member of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Kailua.
