Vatican Is Renewing Contacts With Albania
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VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II has sent a two-man delegation to Albania to establish contact with church and civil authorities after more than 40 years of Roman Catholic Church repression by the hard-line Communist regime, the Vatican announced Wednesday.
The delegation, composed of two diplomats from the department of the Vatican Secretariat of State that deals with relations between the Vatican and other states, left for Albania on Wednesday and will remain there until Saturday.
Albania has been officially an atheist state since the Communists took over at the end of World War II, but the government is introducing reforms, and the first multi-party elections since the war are scheduled for March 31.
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