A saint under investigation

Since the beginning,
Tirana newspapers and televisions have been very skeptical about the
authenticity of the story. "Eleonora tricks again", was the title of
daily Shqip, when the story was first published. Even before that the police
had reached a conclusion; meanwhile, newspapers have deliberately denounced the
story as false. "Saint Eleonora has spoken as the rest of our
politicians", said a TV Klan journalist in a satirical show.

After some days of
investigation, police reported that no trace of any poison was found in the
blood of Eleonora Bregu. Upon this declaration, the saint was declared under
formal investigation for false denunciation.

Saint Eleonora's work
had been several times under media scrutiny. After 25 years of total religious
ban, Albania is now full of spectacular saints who proclaim to restore health
and solve spiritual problems for those depressed. Typically, women from rural
areas go to such spiritual leaders to have babies instead of going to
gynecologists. Some of those saints work as "alternative doctors" and
claim to have a direct link with heaven. Some of those "medics" are
rich enough to advertise their activity on national televisions.

In 2001, a media
campaign began to inform the public that an alternative doctor named Gazmend
Malaj was simply a fraud. Mr. Malaj, a former emigrant to Germany, was head of
a small political party. He claimed to resolve medical problems such as
depression, which in the popular Albanian jargon are known as "bad
eye" or "bad spirit". Other "alternative doctors", claim
to solve myopia, while Saint Eleonora claimed that in some degree, she could
cure cancer.

Some of the newspapers
stopped the publication of such advertising and begun investigations over his
activities. Gazmend Malaj, was constricted to quit his activity after months of
media investigation.

Saint Eleonora, which
also proclaims to have a personal contact with the divine entity, is accused of
using her conversations with God to grab a valuable amount of urban land, which
is owned by other people. Owners of the land, in which saint Eleonora has built
her cult, have asked to get their land back. Their attempts, however, have been
obstructed by a strong political support for saint Eleonora. In 2001, when the
court of Tirana decided that the saint's cult needed to be closed and the land given
back to the owners, several supporters of the saint, including a professor of
law at the University of Tirana, entered a hunger strike.

In the same year,
Saint Eleonora supported the electoral campaign of Monika Kryemadhi, the wife
of the then Prime Minister Ilir Meta. Several intellectuals have therefore
publicly declared that they believe in Saint Eleonora. Artan Fuga, a professor
of Philosophy, at the University of Tirana and in France, has written the
preface on one of saint Eleonora's books.

Despite this, Tirana
journalists massively consider saint Eleonora as simply another fraud.

Mysticism has a long
history in the Albanian culture. Many hundreds of years of isolation have
conserved several aspects of paganism and mysticism, which have been imported
into the Bektashi's Shiite order, giving a new look to paganism. Bektashi's
“tyrbe” or “tekke” (places of worship) are considered as holy places not just
from the Muslim parts of the population, but also from the Christian
population. Bektashi's mysticism has inspired also the Albanian brand of the
"alternative doctors".

Several intellectuals
and politicians, support Bektashism, as they see it as the national religion
because it uses the Albanian as the official language.

Short URL: http://www.albanianeconomy.com/news/?p=272

Posted by on May 30 2007. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry