Cardinal Simoni says faith sustained him through death sentence for Mass honoring President Kennedy
Cardinal Ernest Simoni said his faith sustained him after Albania’s communist government sentenced him to death for celebrating a 1963 Mass for the repose of President John F. Kennedy’s soul. The sentence was commuted to forced labor, and Simoni spent nearly 30 years imprisoned or under state surveillance while secretly celebrating Mass. Simoni credited God with protecting him through persecution and said he holds no resentment toward those who persecuted him. Named a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2016, Simoni continues sharing his testimony and urges people to pray for their enemies and world leaders.
9 hours ago
Cardinal Ernest Simoni says his Catholic faith sustained him through a death sentence, torture and nearly three decades of imprisonment and forced labor in communist Albania. He credits his survival to God’s protection and says he holds no resentment toward those who persecuted him. 1
In 1963, Simoni was arrested and sentenced to death after celebrating a Mass for the repose of the soul of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated that year. The sentence was later commuted to forced labor. 1
Simoni told EWTN’s Mark Irons that he was imprisoned and tortured for practicing his faith. While under state surveillance and labor, he secretly continued to celebrate daily Mass; he said discovery by the authorities could have led to his hanging. 1
Recalling being made to march for 16 hours without food or water, Simoni said, “There it was the Hand of God that protected me.” After Albania’s communist Party of Labor was dissolved in 1991, he was freed from manual labor, though he remained under state surveillance. 1
Pope Francis named Simoni to the College of Cardinals in 2016, after being moved by his testimony; Francis had described him as “a living martyr.” Now 98, Simoni continues to travel and speak about the Gospel and his experience of religious persecution. 1
Simoni says he bears no resentment toward his persecutors. He has urged prayer for enemies, saying Christians should ask God to show them mercy, and he recently returned to the prison where he had been tortured to celebrate Mass publicly. 1
Christian witness and forgiveness amid political persecution
The story of Cardinal Ernest Simoni, as summarized, illustrates how political persecution can turn an ordinary act of religious life—a Mass offered for the repose of President John F. Kennedy’s soul—into a test of conscience. The Catholic meaning of such witness is not that suffering is good in itself, or that Christians should answer oppression with passivity. It is that fidelity to Christ can remain visible under coercion, while forgiveness refuses to let persecution reproduce the hatred it seeks to impose. Forgiveness, in turn, does not erase the wrong or make justice unnecessary.
Christian witness begins with loyalty to the Gospel, not a desire to be persecuted. Pope Francis says Jesus warned his disciples that proclaiming God’s Kingdom would bring opposition; Christians may be hated, but they are not to answer evil by adopting evil’s methods. The Christian’s strength is the Gospel, and the proper response is marked by humility, truth, and hope rather than revenge or violence.
That distinction matters in political persecution. A person who continues a religious practice under threat is not thereby declaring suffering desirable; he is refusing to treat political power as the final authority over conscience and worship. Pope Benedict XVI describes Christian proclamation under hostile regimes as witness to the crucified and risen Christ, whose victory is made visible through mercy and love even toward enemies.
In Simoni’s reported case, the Mass was for Kennedy’s soul, but the state’s response made a religious act a matter of political danger. The available material does not provide enough detail to evaluate every circumstance of his trial or imprisonment. It does, however, frame his experience as one in which faith sustained him after a death sentence. That is best understood as testimony to fidelity under pressure, rather than as a claim that all political conflict is religious persecution or that suffering itself should be sought.
Christian witness is not only private conviction. Benedict XVI teaches that the testimony of a Christian’s life is joined to the explicit proclamation of Christ: a life of faith should point toward the Gospel, not merely toward generic ideals. He also calls on governments to protect freedom of conscience and religion, including the ability to express faith publicly.
This has a civic implication. When a state punishes religious practice simply because it conflicts with its ideology or seeks to control public life, the issue is not only the suffering of the individual believer. It also concerns the freedom of a community to worship and bear witness. The Christian response should neither sanctify state repression nor imitate its coercion. Benedict XVI presents the Church’s witness as love and unity, even in hostile conditions; Pope Francis likewise insists that Christians are to be found among the meek and truthful, not among persecutors.
A further distinction is important: the Christian’s refusal to retaliate is not a refusal to name injustice. Pope Benedict explicitly says that persecution is undeserved and reveals human wickedness, even while God can bring a greater good from painful events. Hope, therefore, does not require pretending the state acted rightly. It means that injustice does not have the power to determine the believer’s ultimate allegiance or extinguish the possibility of redemption.
Christian forgiveness is sometimes misunderstood as excusing the persecutor, forgetting the injury, or declining to seek justice. The Church’s teaching does not require those conclusions. In recognizing Alojzije Stepinac’s witness, John Paul II describes forgiveness and reconciliation as purifying memory of hatred, rancour, and revenge, and as refusing to be overcome by evil. That is a moral change in how one responds to wrongdoing—not a declaration that the wrongdoing never occurred.
The distinction between forgiveness and justice is stated particularly clearly in Pope Francis’s reflection on victims and perpetrators of violence in Colombia. He says there is hope for the person who has done evil, but also that, in the perpetrator’s moral and spiritual regeneration, “justice has to be fulfilled.” Forgiveness and accountability are therefore not opposites. Forgiveness relinquishes vengeance; justice seeks truth, protects victims, and addresses wrongdoing in a morally ordered way.
That distinction also guards against placing an unfair burden on victims. Forgiveness is a Christian call, but it is not a command to deny trauma or to pretend reconciliation has already been achieved. In the same Colombian address, Pope Francis acknowledges that wounds of the heart can be deeper and harder to heal than bodily wounds. He presents love and forgiveness as a path toward healing, not as a claim that the harm was slight or that recovery is immediate.
Forgiveness has public significance because retaliation can perpetuate the cycle of violence. Pope Francis says that violence begets further violence and hatred further hatred, and that breaking this chain requires concrete forgiveness and reconciliation. In the face of persecution, refusing revenge is thus not weakness or approval of the persecutor. It is a refusal to allow the persecutor’s methods to define the Christian’s moral response.
Pope Francis calls the temptation to revenge and violence a true defeat for Christians. He does not mean that victims must remain silent, or that they cannot seek protection and justice. Rather, Christian witness must not turn into the same kind of hatred it opposes. A persecuted believer can tell the truth about what happened, seek lawful remedies, defend others’ freedom, and still refuse to nourish hatred.
The news item’s central lesson, then, is not simply that faith can endure a death sentence. It is that political power cannot finally command the conscience of a person whose deepest allegiance is to Christ—and that fidelity is most fully Christian when joined to a refusal of vengeance. Such witness neither excuses oppression nor guarantees that earthly justice will be done. It points instead to a hope grounded in the crucified and risen Christ, and to the possibility that truth, justice, and reconciliation may ultimately prevail.