Blessed Luigj Paliq

Luigj Paliq, baptised Mati Palić, was born on 20 February 1877 at Janjevo in Kosovo, then under Ottoman rule and largely Muslim. He grew up in a deeply religious household, and two of his brothers also became Franciscan priests. At nineteen he went to Italy and asked to be received into the Order of Friars Minor at Cortemaggiore, where he entered the novitiate with the name Luigi and made solemn profession on 26 April 1901. Ordained priest that September, he was sent home to serve the Albanian mission of the Friars Minor. In 1907 he became rector of the Franciscan friary of Gjakova, and from 1912 assisted in the parish of Peja, a territory occupied after the First Balkan War by the Montenegrins, allies of the Serbs, who pursued a harshly repressive policy toward the Albanian population and pressed both Catholics and Muslims into forced conversion to Orthodoxy.

He defended the local people, Catholic and Muslim alike, urging the latter to remain faithful to their own creed. This angered the Montenegrin authorities, who had him arrested at Peja on 4 March 1913. He was beaten and tortured in prison and killed on 7 March, before any trial.