Ernest Simoni


Ernest Simoni Troshani is an Albanian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
He was created a cardinal in a consistory held on 19 November 2016 by Pope Francis.

Life

Ernest Simoni was born in 1928.
He entered the Franciscan seminary in 1938 while remaining there until 1948 when the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha closed the college in a wave of anti-religious sentiment and persecution. He was ordained to the priesthood on 7 April 1956.
On 24 December 1963 he was imprisoned by the Communist authorities because he celebrated a Mass in memory of assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was converted into a prison term and he spent 28 years at penal labour, first in a mine and then in a sewage canal. He celebrated Mass using smuggled bread and grapes. By the late 1990s, he exercised his ministry in several Albanian villages.
On 21 September 2014 he met Pope Francis during his apostolic visit to Albania and provided the pope with his own testimony on his experiences under the Communist regime.
On 9 October 2016, Pope Francis announced that he would create Simoni a cardinal in the consistory held on 19 November of the same year. He was given special dispensation not to be consecrated a bishop prior to the consistory.
At the consistory, he was assigned the titular church of Santa Maria della Scala.