Alumni Spotlight: Fr. Fredrik Kalaj

by James Koelsch
MOSAIC, Summer 2011


Escape to Freedom and Truth

  Many Westerners may take truth and freedom for granted, but not former refugees like Fr. Fredrik Kalaj. He is from Albania, so his lifelong quest for both has been a dangerous struggle.
  This graduate of the Class of 2001, therefore, urges his parishioners at St. Joseph Parish in Erie, Michigan, to savor freedom and truth. Not everyone has this luxury.

Admirers of Chairman Mao

  Father Kalaj's parents, for example, felt compelled to flee the city of Shkodra in northern Albania in 1947 when communism was taking root in the Balkans. His father was a teacher, and an uncle had been sentenced to thirty years in the country's political prisons. Father's parents left town and began their family where they were not as well known. Shortly after their return to Shkodra a decade later, Frederick, the fourth of their five children, was born.
  Although the government's initial "tolerance" of religion permitted the family to practice its Catholic faith, things changed dramatically when Fred was age ten. Admiring Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution in China, the Albanian communists decided to follow suit. In 1967, the government "freed" the people from religion by declaring Albania to be an atheistic country and forbidding religious practice.
  Soon afterward, the government promulgated a law that declared faith to be "propaganda." "If you spoke about God, you could go to jail for fifteen years," says Father. Eventually, the government destroyed many churches and converted others to secular purposes.

Truth Hidden in a Ceiling

  During this repression, Fred reached the age where young people begin asking fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. "It was very hard because you could not really find a response to this," he recalls. "You had to be careful who you talked to." So, given his love for reading, the fourteen-year-old turned to great literature.
  Fred began keeping a notebook of passages he liked. He had to hide the notebook because it contained what the communists considered illegal material. One passage was from Tolstoy's War and Peace, about how God has a hand in history.
  God showed this hand on April 15, 1979, the day an earthquake shook Shkodra. The government pressed Fred's older brother Leonard, a builder, into service to help to assess the damage. Leonard came across the Gospel of Matthew in a suitcase of forbidden books an old woman had been hiding above her ceiling. Being religious, he asked her for it, and the woman gave it to him, sending him away with her blessing.
  After Fred returned from a compulsory stint in the army in 1981, Leonard gave him this copy of the Gospel. "He said, 'I know you love books and deep themes,'" recalls Father Kalaj. "'Please read this book. Please read it from beginning to the end. If you don't like it, read it again, for my sake.'"
  Fred read it so many times he can now recite much of this Gospel from memory. The repetition was not for his brother's sake, however. It was for his own, for the Gospel changed his life. It gave purpose to a young man who was searching for the deepest meaning of life.
  "In the Beatitudes, Jesus was saying to me, look at how important you are," Father explains. "If you become salt of the earth by holding Christian values in your heart, the world will be saved."

Escape from Albania

  Another turning point in Fred's life occurred in 1990, when he was thirtythree. He and two friends escaped to Montenegro by swimming to the other side of Lake Shkodra. To reduce the risk of being shot by the military gunboats, they made the crossing by night, swimming seven hours in the dark.
  After serving four months in jail for crossing the border illegally and spending five months in a refugee camp, Fred was able to immigrate to the United States with help from a cousin in New York. He moved to metropolitan Detroit to live with his younger brother's family and work in a plastics factory—until he overheard part of a phone conversation while visiting a friend.
  The friend was chatting with a seminarian, whom Fred was surprised to learn was already thirty-eight years old. "I thought you had to begin studies right after high school," he says. Because he had been harboring a desire to be a priest since reflecting upon the Gospel of Matthew, Fred sought advice from Fr. Primus Ndrevashaj, an Albanian who had been in jail with Fred's uncle.
  The pastor of Our Lady of the Albanians in Beverly Hills was happy to hear the news, but he thought it prudent to make sure Fred was not trying to escape from problems posed by his new environment. He had the recent immigrant assist him in his ministry over the summer and, convinced the vocation was genuine, Father Primus helped Fred get into Sacred Heart that September.
  After a year of immersion in English, he was able to begin college in September 1993 and finish theology in 2001. Father says it was "a most joyful time" because he spent his time reading deep books—his favorite pastime.

Beautifying the House of Truth

  After ordination, Father spent time as associate pastor at St. Patrick in White Lake and St. Lawrence in Utica. In 2006, Cardinal Adam Maida asked him to be pastor at St. Joseph. Father Kalaj is delighted to be part of the history of a historic parish, the third oldest in Michigan. He is adding to its heritage by drawing upon his artistic talents as a painter and his skills as a leader to organize parishioners in beautifying the sanctuary.
  Father Kalaj made the task into a parish project. With permission, he sent a small band of parishioners to the closed St. John Cantius church in River Rouge to retrieve one of the side altarpieces. A parishioner performed the carpentry necessary to tailor the structure to fit its new space. Father Kalaj renovated the crucifix already on the wall, repainting the corpus so the details would stand out.
  As much as he is leading the people in glorifying the Lord, this farming community is leaving its mark on him, too. "By the nature of their work, they have learned to depend entirely on God," says Father. "This is very powerful for me." So, not only has he found truth, he now has the luxury of living in it.