Dom Simon Jubani
Dom Simon Jubani (8 March 1927 - 12 July 2011) was a Catholic priest and Albanian political prisoner confined in Burrel Prison for 26 years during the regime of Enver Hoxha, where he was kept in a 12 by 24 foot cell with 30 other prisoners and beaten brutally when he refused to work in the mines.[1]
Dom Simon, brother of Dom Lazer who was poisoned in 1982, was born in Shkodër, a city in Northwestern Albania with a large Catholic population, to a devoted Catholic family and entered seminary in 1943. He was ordained in 1958 and then arrested in 1963 while serving at the Abbey of Mirëdita, a nearby province or practicing the Catholic religion. Practicing religion in Albania became illegal starting in 1967 and many religious leaders were tortured, killed, or imprisoned for practicing their faith publicly. Dom Simon wrote a memoir of his time in prison titled, "Burgjet e mia." Dom Simon was released on 13 April 1989, along with other imprisoned Catholic priests.
On 11 November 1990, Dom Simon Jubani was the priest to openly celebrate the first public mass since the fall of Hoxha's regime, defying the law. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of San Francisco in 1991, honored as a "Protagonist of a new era in Albania."[2]
Dom Simon Jubani died of a cerebral hemorrage on 12 July 2011 at the Regional Hospital in Shkodër.[3][4]