Pope Leo XIV received Cardinal Ernest Simoni, accompanied by more than three dozen family members, in an audience on April 27, 2026. Cardinal Simoni, who is now 97 years old, spent 18 years in prison and hard labor from 1963 to 1981 under the Communist regime in his home country of Albania. Pope Francis once called him a “living martyr.”
Despite his age, Cardinal Simoni, who is now based in Florence, Italy, still travels and participates in public Masses and events. According to some sources, he continues to be active as an exorcist, a ministry he reportedly has carried out since before his imprisonment.
“There was an atmosphere full of joy, full of hope, upon contemplating the Holy Father’s face — which represents the face of Jesus — to proclaim to all men and women the good news of Heaven, of peace, of fraternity and of love for all the peoples of the world,” Cardinal Simoni told the press after the audience, according to Vatican News.
During the audience, Cardinal Simoni gave the Holy Father “a cross and a relic of the Albanian martyrs who gave their life for faithfulness, for love of Jesus, for the salvation of the people of Albania, so that all men and women may contemplate the smile of Heaven.”
“Certainly,” he said, the audience “has been a special grace that the Holy Spirit has given me, and also the Holy Father, to proclaim together, for all the peoples of the world, the peace that comes from Heaven, the sweetest peace, spiritual joy, and the joy of the resurrection. And everything lies in this: faith in the resurrection will have the eternal happiness that Jesus has prepared, pouring out all his blood for all the men and women of the world and of all time.”
Not his first papal encounter
This wasn’t his first encounter with the pontiff. This past Easter Sunday, April 5, he was among those chosen to be beside Leo XIV when he gave the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the Loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. Two days later, on April 7, he celebrated 70 years of priesthood.
Pope Francis moved to tears
Cardinal Simoni also met more than once with Pope Francis. Back in September 2014, the Argentine pope listened to his testimony while on his apostolic voyage to Albania. His words moved the pontiff to tears. Two years later, Francis created him cardinal — a relatively rare honor for someone who is only a simple diocesan priest.
Then in February 2024, Cardinal Simoni was present for another audience with Pope Francis. On that occasion, the Pope thanked him again for his testimony and invited those present to applaud him. He remarked again on what the cardinal suffered “in the prisons of Communist Albania, perhaps the cruelest persecution. And he continues to bear witness.”
Years of persecution
Ernest Simoni joined the Franciscan minor seminary in Troshani, Albania, in 1938 at the age of 10. In 1948, Communist forces ransacked his friary and took it over as a place for torturing prisoners. After two years of obligatory military service, he continued his studies in secret. He received priestly ordination in 1956. Although he held on to his Franciscan spirituality, he served as a diocesan priest under the bishop of Shkodër.
On December 24, 1963, he was arrested after celebrating the Christmas Vigil Mass. The justification for this was that he’d celebrated memorial Masses for President John F. Kennedy after his assassination a month earlier, and because of his activity as an exorcist. Communist officials subsequently tortured and interrogated him for three months, sentencing him to death.
His sentence was commuted to 25 years of forced labor, of which he served 18. When he could, he celebrated Mass clandestinely with fragments of bread and wine he made on his own. However, even after his formal release in 1981 he could only exercise his ministry in secret. The situation finally changed with the fall of the Communist Regime in 1990.
Since then he has continued to share his testimony and exercise his ministry, with remarkable peace and lack of bitterness.
