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The Catholic Church, through a statement to the media, has expressed concern about the results of the Census 2023 and the effects that the decline in population will have on the community.
The Catholic Church of Albania has officially opposed the results of the census recently published by INSTAT.
The spokesman of the Episcopal Conference of Albania, Dom Mark Pashkja, declares that there are more than 410 thousand Albanians who have emigrated since 2011 when the last census was done.
The Catholic Church is not too convinced about the number of Catholics in our country, even though there is no accurate data for this, causing the church to start a census of how many Catholics currently live in our country.
In this statement, the Catholic Church once again spoke out against surrogacy while making an official request to the Assembly for this draft law that strongly condemns it, whether or not it has been officially filed in Parliament.
Other religious communities have also condemned the surrogacy draft bill, saying that it harms women even more, those who are poor or vulnerable, and that it overturns the institution of marriage as very important for society.
" Regarding the number of Catholics, we can say that we do not have the elements at hand to judge whether this is actually the number of Catholics in Albania. The general shrinking of the population has also led to the shrinking of Catholics and their flight to Western countries , mainly in Europe and North America.
In these years, we, as a Catholic community, have not conducted population censuses. Therefore, we also have a commitment to carry out this Census in our dioceses and parishes to know, although roughly, but realistically, the number of Catholics in the territory.'
However, the Catholic Church also underlines that the number of those who left Albania during the 13 years is greater than the figure of 410,000 calculated by INSTAT.
'We think the number is higher than that. It is a phenomenon that we as the Catholic Church have felt and expressed from time to time, due to our capillary presence in the territory of Albania. It is a phenomenon that we as the Catholic Church have felt and expressed from time to time, due to our capillary presence in the territory of Albania. We have witnessed the mass departure of Albanian families outside of Albania and we experience this wound every day.
This is linked to a second concern that the statistics show: the shrinking of the young and working age. This brings consequences in the development of society and especially in the spiritual and economic well-being of Albanian families. This contraction reduces the number of marriages and new families that are a guarantee for the birth and education of children, as the basic duties of marriage and the family and that guarantee the continuity not only numerically, but also qualitatively of the society. The departure of young people is a lack of an asset that impoverishes Albania. "- said in response.
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