EUROPE/ITALY - Twenty years after the first landing of Albanian refugees on the Italian coast

Otranto (Agenzia Fides) – On 3 March 1991 the first ship docked in the port of Otranto, carrying many desperate escapees from the Albanian coast. The local community, at all levels of society, immediately responded to the emergency with a sense of solidarity. Twenty years after Otranto we remember those events with an initiative promoted by Caritas, the local council of Otranto, the Agimi association (which in Albanian means “dawn”) and Misericordia (Mercy). The initiative brings us back to the first migrations which brought thousands of men, women and children to the Italian coasts. The city remembered them with a torchlight procession on 3 March from “Piazza degli Eroi” (Heroes' Square) at the port at 4.30 pm, with the participation of local associations, the armed forces and police, religious and civil authorities. There was a pause inside the cemetery to pay homage to the unmarked graves of shipwrecked Albanians. Archbishop Donato Negro of Otranto led a brief moment of reflection and prayer. The torchlight procession ended at the “Don Tonino Bello” reception centre where there was a panel discussion with Italian and Albanian institutional authorities.
From the drama of hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants who chased the “dream called Italy” came, among other things, an initiative promoted by Msgr. Giuseppe Colavero, then director of Caritas in Otranto, a follower of Raoul Follereau - the apostle of peace and of lepers: the foundation of two centres in southern Albania for more than twenty young blind students, some of whom are also offered accommodation. The project uses Albanians workers trained in Italy thanks to the cooperation of the Blind Union and the Apostolic Movement for the Blind. The main characteristic of the two centres dedicated to Braille literacy is the confessional pluralism, since in the south of the Country most of the population is Muslim and Orthodox. (SL) (Agenzia Fides 3/03/2011)