Monsignor Zef Oroshi (Çoku), senior Catholic cleric, bishop, founder of the first Albanian Catholic church in the USA, Our Lady of Good Counsel (Bronx, New York), publisher, translator, was born in Kaftalla of Mirdita. He completed his primary education in his hometown, while he started high school in 1927 at the Saverian College in Shkodër and, after a year, continued at the Junior Seminary in Thiene (Italy). On October 22, 1936, he began studying theology at the International College. He graduated in 1940, in the Congregation for the Propagation of Religion and was ordained by Cardinal Pietro Fumasoni-Biondi. This same year, he interrupted his doctoral studies and returned to Albania, where the Bishop of Mirdita, Monsignor Frano Gjini, appointed him his secretary. At the same time, he served as parish administrator of the Church of Saint Kolli in Spac and, from 1942, as parish priest of the Church of Mary Magdalene in Ungrej, Lezha. In 1951, the Security Forces tried to arrest him while he was giving mass, but he managed to escape. Supported by his faithful parishioners of Ungrej, in mid-1951 he crossed the border to Yugoslavia. In the years 1952-1954 he studied philology and philosophy in Belgrade. In 1954 he went to Italy (Rome), where in 1960 he continued his doctoral studies in theology, which he had interrupted in 1940. In 1961, the Vatican sent him to the USA, as the spiritual leader of the Albanians. Since 1966, he published there the quarterly English- Albanian “Jeta Katholike Shqiptare” (“Albanian Catholic Life”) . Three years later (1969), he founded the first Albanian Catholic church in the USA, the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel (today Our Lady of Shkodra), in Bronx, New York. The first mass in it was held on Christmas 1969. In 1973, he founded the “Albanian Catholic Center”. In January 1974, after the publication of the “Holy Scripture (The Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles)”, Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) gave the title of honor to Monsignor, for his merits towards Albania and for his pastoral work with Albanians in emigration . He passed away at the “Albert Einstein” hospital, in New York, in 1989. (In the photo: Zef Oroshi)
Text: Encyclopedic dictionary of victims of communist terror – Vol. VI , “West Print”, Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism, Tirana, 2017, page 153-154.
Photo: © https://ulqini-online.com/sajti/?p=23985
Graphic processing: AHCF
