Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The Good Council on the land of the Albanians

Escútari (Albania)

In northern Albania, the city of Soctari - Shkodër - has been the heart of the country's Catholicism since ancient times. In this land of tenacious faith, which passed through one of the most ferocious regimes against religion in the twentieth century, a devotion to Our Lady of the Good Council, an advocation whose name evokes comfort and guidance in the difficult decisions of life, is struck.

There is a historical thread that gives meaning to this devotion. The title of the Good Council is linked to the great Marian sanctuary of Genazzano, in Italy, whose famous image, according to tradition, came there from Albanian lands in the 15th century, when many Albanians fled the Ottoman advance. Hence the Albanian piety feels the Good Council as something deeply of its own, intertwined with the Catholic identity of the region and with the memory of a people who saw their faith leave and return over the centuries.

At this point, honesty forces containment. The sources consulted do not contain a well-documented and specific local historical narrative of Soctari that allows to affirm a concrete miraculous episode without the risk of inventing. There is no precise date for the local implementation of this advocation in the city, nor a secure chronology of a sanctuary or a local image. What is documented is that Soctari is an important center of Albanian Catholicism and the Marian memory of the country; the rest belongs to a very widespread devotional tradition that should not be presented here as a proven local fact.

Similarly, there is no specific and documented link of the Good Council of Soctari to the Rosary in the sources. That is why it is wise not to affirm it, but to record devotion as it can be sustained: an ancient love of the Albanian people to the Mother who advises well, rooted in her identity and in her long fidelity under the test.