The Telegraph

Tirana – In his first trip to a Muslim-majority country, Pope Francis held up Albania as a model of religious harmony compared to the sectarian savagery sweeping across the Middle East.
Large crowds lined the broad avenues of Tirana, the capital, on Sunday as the Pope was driven into the centre of the city after a short flight from Rome.
The Pope said that “authentic religious spirit is being perverted” in many parts of the world and that “religious differences are being distorted and manipulated.”
That had led to “conflict and violence”, said the Pope, who recently gave his conditional approval to US air strikes against Isil extremists persecuting Christians and other minorities in Iraq.
He contrasted religious intolerance with the example of Albania, a country of three million people where around 60 per cent are Muslim, 10 per cent are Catholic and the rest are Christian Orthodox.

“There is a rather beautiful characteristic of Albania, one which is given great care and attention, and which gives me great joy: I am referring to the peaceful coexistence and collaboration that exists among followers of different religions,” the Pope said during the first address of his day-long trip to the Balkan country, where religion was suppressed for decades under the dictator Enver Hoxha.
“The climate of respect and mutual trust between Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims is a precious gift to the country,” he said.
Nobody should use God as a “shield” with which to justify “acts of violence and oppression”, he added.
As the Pope was driven among the crowds in a white, open-topped Pope-mobile, crowds cheered and waved Vatican flags.
Encapsulating his message of religious tolerance, one man held up a placard which read “I love the Bible and Koran because I am Albanian.”
Albania, which Hoxha declared the world’s first atheist state in 1967, had emerged from the dark years of dictatorship and re-embraced religious belief, rebuilding churches and mosques that had been destroyed or converted to other uses by the Communist regime.
“What the experience in Albania shows is that a peaceful and fruitful coexistence between persons and communities of believers of different religions is not only desirable, but possible and realistic,” the Argentinean pontiff said.
Albania offered “an inspiring example” to countries riven by sectarian violence and religious hatred.
Albania, which he referred to as “the Land of the Eagles”, had suffered greatly under Hoxha’s regime, when churches and mosques were destroyed and Catholic priests were persecuted and tortured.
It was “a land of martyrs” that had endured “difficult times of persecution”.
This is the fourth international trip of Francis’s papacy, after visits to Brazil, the Holy Land and South Korea. He is scheduled to visit Turkey next month.