Maria Tuci

Maria Tuci (also Marije Tuçi) was born on 12 March 1928 in the village of Ndërfushaz near Rrëshen in the district of Mirdita, Albania, the daughter of Nikoll Mark Tuci and Dila Fusha. She grew up in a devout Roman Catholic family and received her education at the college of the Institute of the Poor Daughters of the Holy Stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi—the Stigmatine Sisters—in Shkodër. There she learned both academic subjects and how to live as a Christian among the people. She longed to serve God fully, considered religious life, and asked admission to the Institute as a postulant. She was known as beautiful, intelligent, and firm in the faith.

In 1946, at the request of Bishop Frano Gjini, abbot of Saint Alexander of Orosh, Maria and her relative Davida Markagjoni were sent as teachers into the countryside of Gozan and Sang. In a state turning officially atheist they bore witness to God and taught catechism in secret. Maria used her own resources to buy school supplies for the children. She also helped distribute leaflets against sham elections and regularly walked six or seven kilometers to take part in Mass. When persecution forced the Stigmatine sisters to leave or disperse, she returned to her family, still clinging to her vocation.

After the killing of the Communist Party secretary of Mirdita on 7 August 1949, hundreds of mostly Catholic people were seized in reprisal. Maria was arrested on 10–11 August 1949 by the Sigurimi secret police—the only woman among some three hundred detainees—and taken to prison in Shkodër. She refused every demand to abandon her faith. Condemned to detention, she was held with other prisoners in a cold, dark, unventilated cell where rainwater rose to the level of the mattresses. She was beaten, humiliated, and sexually assaulted. One officer, Hilmi Seiti, tried to force her into relations; when she resisted with strength, the torments increased. He vowed that even her own family would not recognize her. She was stripped naked and shut in a sack with a furious cat that the guards beat with sticks, so that the animal clawed and bit her. Untreated wounds of that kind could kill.

Hospitalized in Shkodër, she was seen about a year after her arrest by sisters who found her completely disfigured and barely recognizable. She told them that Hilmi Seiti had promised to leave her unrecognizable, and she added her thanksgiving to God. In a letter she wrote that all torture could destroy only her body. She died on 24 October 1950 at the age of twenty-two in the civil hospital of Shkodër, a rosary in her hand. Before death she said she thanked God who had given her the strength to die free.

Her remains could be identified only after the fall of the regime by sisters who had remained faithful despite dispersion. She was first buried in the Catholic cemetery of Shkodër and later transferred to the church of the Stigmatine Sisters in the same city. Pope Francis recognized her martyrdom on 26–27 April 2016. On 5 November 2016 she was beatified in Shkodër by Cardinal Angelo Amato, together with the thirty-eight Martyrs of Albania—one of only three laypersons and the sole woman among them. Her feast is kept on 24 October, the anniversary of her death. She is nicknamed "the modern Saint Agnes."

May Blessed Maria Tuci obtain for us the courage to remain free in Christ and the purity that no violence can take away; imitate today her fortitude under trial.