Religious Materiality and Virtual Sainthood: The Case of Shna Ndou (St. Anthony) Pilgrimage in Laç

Abstract

The interdisciplinary perspective, between history and anthropology, of our contribution has as its subject the pilgrimage at Kisha e Shna Ndout (Sanctuary of St. Anthony of Padua) in Laç, northern Albania, which is one of the most visited religious sites in southeastern Europe. The church, built there and ministered by Franciscans, is now an impressive place of worship frequented throughout the year by thousands of pilgrims. On the 12th and 13th of June of each year, an official pilgrimage is held, which reaches its climax on the night of the 12th, when thousands of Albanians sleep in the shrine seeking blessings and healing. The pilgrimage practices show how materiality is a privileged means of reaching out to a religious place. This materiality is grounded in the multilayered built environment, which has been built and rebuilt and especially reconstructed after the collapse of the socialist regime—a process that reveals the pivotal function of secular infrastructures in the case of religious places. Virtuality is also an important aspect of the pilgrimage, and so materiality and virtuality form a single milieu that reshapes perceptions. Through participation in this pilgrimage, virtuality is sacralized and promotes sanctity.

1. Introduction

Through the historical and ethnographic study of the Kisha e Shna Ndout (the sanctuary of St. Antony of Padua), near Laç in Albania, our contribution sheds light on the materialization of the sacred through the variegated religious practices that have emerged after being silenced during the communist era1.

By materiality, following the most important scholars who have linked this concept to the religious sphere, we mean material elements such as buildings, bodies, and objects that express and contribute to the production of religious meanings. This materiality is related to the past enforced invisibility and camouflage and involves a re-emergence of the underground. However, the process of re-appropriating the religious sphere entails more than just the restoration of a spiritual dimension, which has been denied and persecuted in public and silenced in private. It also involves the collective emergence of religious materiality, i.e., the visible and tangible expressions of religion in the public domain, such as the construction of religious spaces, the display of religious symbols, and the practice of rituals and ceremonies. Through the revival of religious materiality, there is a reclaiming of religious identity and visibility, allowing for the communal expression and preservation of religious traditions and beliefs.

Drawing on the Spatial and the Material Turn, particularly New Materialism (Larkin 2013; Jones 2016), we engage with scholars who have used new materialism in recent years as a lens to explore religious space (Burchardt and Höhne 2015; Meyer et al. 2010; Plate 2015; Hutchings and McKenzie 2017; Keane 2008; Howard 2018). Like them, we want to analyze the resilience of place by focusing on the processes of construction, destruction, and reconstruction.

This particular materiality stems from the development of symbolic attributions and narratives relating to Albania’s recent history, which has involved a dialectical relationship between religion, materiality, and communism. Materiality and immateriality in religion should not be seen as opposing forces but rather as elements that work together in a dialectical relationship. Recognizing the materiality of religion involves understanding the physical manifestations and expressions of religious beliefs, practices, and artifacts. At the same time, acknowledging the immateriality of religion involves recognizing the spiritual, transcendent, and intangible aspects that lie beyond the material realm. Examining the interplay between materiality and immateriality in religion is essential for a holistic understanding of religious experiences and expressions. We explore the individual and collective dimensions of religion by focusing not only on how people touch but also observe, smell, and physically participate (Plate 2015).

Religious practice in Albania is still ambivalently influenced by communist material realism. On the one hand, tactility, body-to-body, and body-to-relic contact are considered to be a privileged religious experience; on the other hand, these kinds of material contact are seen as antithetical to the country’s anti-religious past.

We also draw on research that has focused on the sociality of infrastructures (Larkin 2013; Amin 2014; Burchardt and Westendorp 2018) through our consideration of access to place and the material components of space (Dionigi and Fliche 2012). Infrastructures make it possible for people to access and attend a religious place. They are integral to any observation of the materiality of space, and their profane and secular identity can become a structuring part of the sacred. Focusing on infrastructures also offers a key for analyzing the power relationships involved with the highly institutional and structured Roman Catholic Church, particularly through the lens of the hierarchization of roles and formal appropriation of the place.

In Albania, places are now open to bottom-up forms of attendance. Lively and effervescent religious practices have re-emerged, involving concrete and popular gestures, in what we call a religious materiality. Our infrastructure perspective illuminates the power of framing and hosting these practices within a Catholic institution—the monastery and church dedicated to Saint Antony of Padua. The infrastructure, the fruit of synergy between Italian and Albanian secular and religious institutions, provides the material means of access to the sacred.

This materiality is also virtual since it is brokered by digital media and communication spaces. Some pilgrims place their smartphones on the statue so that the photos of their loved ones can be blessed, while others stream video calls, allowing their loved ones to virtually experience the pilgrimage and access the sainthood of Shna Ndou from a distance. This digital mediation merges the physical and virtual realms, creating a tangible link between the pilgrimage and personal connections.

Hence, despite the disempowerment and the material destruction wrought by the communist regime, the memory of the past and the contemporary religious identity (Eade and Katić 2016) of the place are brought to life by material practices. Moreover, since the practices have been nowadays renewed through digital tools, virtual reality and the real virtuality experimented by pilgrims have created an augmented form of ritual.

We collected the information during our visit to the sanctuary, in particular on the two days of 12 and 13 June 2022 and 2023 when the Feast of St. Anthony was celebrated. Our prolonged participant observation was enriched by a large number of chats and in-depth interviews with pilgrims of all ages, social backgrounds, and religious affiliations in Albanian, Italian, and English. We studied space both inside and outside the church, but we were unable to access the interior of the monastery.

The first section of our discussion will provide a reconstruction through the available indirect sources the sanctuary’s material history and emphasize the interreligious character of the pilgrimage’s history. The second section will show how the material destruction of the sanctuary has been followed by a reconstruction through Italian and Albanian agencies working together. In the third section, we show how the infrastructure, produced through this collaboration, provides the material and bottom-up means of access to the sacred today. The fourth section is dedicated to the interconnection between the virtual and material dimensions in what we call virtual sainthood.

2. The First Life of the Space: From the Origins to the Seventies

The case of Laç serves as an illustration of religious sites associated with St. Anthony of Padua, such as the renowned Ste in Istanbul documented by Dionigi and Fliche (2012). However, limited attention appears to have been given to comprehensively studying the history of devotion to Shna Ndou in Laç as well as across Albania as a whole. The available data often consist of fragmented accounts intermingled with hagiographic narratives, primarily gathered by Catholic scholars, particularly after the reconstruction efforts in the 1990s2.

According to Elsie (2000), Shna Ndou’s cult spread late to Albania. None of the Catholic churches that were recorded in the 16th and 17th centuries (Cordignano 1934) were dedicated to him. It is likely that Shna Ndou’s cult only spread across northern Albania, particularly among the clans of the mountainous areas, during the 19th century, when Franciscan monks arrived from Italy.3 Specifically, the site where the Sanctuary of Laç stands today was previously related to another saint, Vlash (Blaise), a martyr from Sebaste, sometimes confused with Shën Vlash (Saint Blaise).

(Giakoumis 2016, p. 105) asserts that in the 19th century, Shna Ndou managed to supplant devotion to Shën Vlash in a region that was divided and uncertain in terms of religious beliefs. This substitution not only helped strengthen the bonds between the Albanian Adriatic coast, both north and south, but also fostered connections with Rome during a period of emerging nationalism. However, this hypothesis needs to be confirmed, indicating how limited the historical research on this topic still is. Archival sources about Catholics in Albania, although available, have not yet been studied in depth, leaving various milieus unexplored (Nuro 2020). However, a key factor is that Shna Ndou’s shrine is located in an area—northern Albania—where a Catholic presence dates back to Roman times and continued during the Ottoman period (O’Mahony 2008).

Concrete data are available for the first half of the 20th century, however. Of particular interest is the account by Erich von Luckwald (1884–1969), who was a German lawyer, diplomat, and military officer, the director of the Albanian Party Office (NSDAP), and, later, the German Reich Ambassador to Albania. In 1943, he published a book in which he collected memories of his time in Albania, including photos of considerable historical interest, with some showing the church of Shna Ndou. Most of the photos come from a trip around the country (probably during the summer of 1936), but some date to 1941, the period of the Italian occupation. Von Luckwald’s (1942) pages show that territory was, before the advent of communism, a land of encounter and mixing of religions and, in particular, rich and lively religious diversity characterizing the feast days of the saint, which were celebrated in a chapel on a hill overlooking the landscape described by the author.

The book by Fr. Donat Kurti (1903–1983), which is one of the few sources permitting a virtual reconstruction of the place’s architecture and the material dimensions, contains a brief description of the church’s interior during the 1950s: “The first impression for anyone entering the church is of being in an underground church. Its floor is made of large stone slabs divided into several squares and the altars are filled with limestone. The roof is made of solid stone […]” (Kurti 2019, p. 129).

Albeit fragmentary, these accounts provide some insight into the church before its destruction in 1971 by order of the communist government led by Hoxha. From 1945 to 1990, the communist regime conducted a harsh anti-religious campaign that culminated in the banning of all religious practices in 1967. Imitating the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the regime sought to secularize Albanian society in the belief that religion was an obstacle to the progress of the nation (Karataş 2020). The harsh measures that followed included the arrest, murder, and confinement of many religious leaders, as well as the closure of all sacred places, some of which were destroyed. In June 1966, the seminary, church, and assembly premises were designated as a “military no-go zone” (Pllumi 1994, p. 14). In February 1967, the sacred site was desecrated and the church was dynamited, resulting in its complete destruction by 1971.

3. The Reconstruction after the Collapse of the Communist Regime

In 1990, the lifting of the religious ban ushered in a “new democratic course” in which religion was seen as a symbol of breaking free from the despotic communist past. The transition from a closed communist system to an open capitalist system was a complex undertaking, leading to a redefinition of the institutional framework within the state and Albanian society. This transformation involved a combination of communist heritage and the pursuit of a new democratic and globally oriented path. The revival of religious practices unfolded amidst a backdrop of social, political, and economic instability (Clayer 2003), making it a multifaceted process.

This certainly did not stem the reconstruction of the Shna Ndou Shrine, which was among the first places of worship to be visited after the collapse of the regime, despite being reduced to rubble. However, accurate sources describing how the rebuilding process took place are somewhat scarce, but a useful account is provided by the “Notiziario dell’Antoniano. Speciale Albania” published in 1994, which contains contributions by various Franciscan monks who participated directly or indirectly in the reconstruction of the shrine. The fact that the book was written in Italian and printed in Italy indicates how the Italian Catholic networks, mostly Franciscan, supported the reconstruction of the shrine.

The reconstruction of Laç probably attracted significant attention from Italian Catholics, given the shrine’s symbolic importance within Albanian Catholicism and its location in an area with a high concentration of Italian Catholics. Nevertheless, the dynamics within the Italian and Albanian Catholic communities are unclear. For example, the role of the Franciscans and that of the Vatican leadership and the contribution of the Albanian monks who were still alive are uncertain, as are the dynamics within the Albanian dioceses, although a degree of cooperation between them is likely according to evidence in some pages of the ‘Notiziario’. The roles of the individual actors, especially Caroli4 and Pllumi5, who were Franciscan monks on the front line of the reconstruction work, also need to be clarified. However, the narratives in the “Notiziario” may provide us with some insights that can be further developed in the future.

In the “Notiziario”, we read that the shrine was rebuilt after the fall of the communist regime thanks to Ernesto Caroli, the founder of the Antoniano of Bologna (Pllumi 1994, pp. 15–16). The foundation stone was symbolically laid in March 1992 by Ivan Dias, the Apostolic Nuncio, and its solemn blessing was made by the Archbishop of Durrës and Tirana, Monsignor Rrok Mirdita (1939–2015), on 2 May 1995. He was an Albanian from Montenegro and head of the Albanian hierarchy, which was strongly centralized and closely linked to the Vatican (Clayer 2003, p. 15).

The intervention from abroad, in this case of Italian Catholic networks, is a common pattern in the revival of not only Catholic but also other religious communities, such as Muslim ones (Clayer 2003). For example, many actors from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey traveled to Albania to support the material and knowledge-based reconstruction of Islam (Bria 2019).

Immediately after the collapse of the regime, it was clear that the communist legacy had left a void not only in material but also in social terms. Religious infrastructure was destroyed (De Rapper 2012), as were liturgical materials and literature. Albanians were also turned away from religion through propaganda and an educational approach that branded it as an obstacle to progress. This resulted in a kind of apathy and distrust among Albanians toward religious affairs, and many became unfamiliar with the practical and doctrinal aspects of religion. Moreover, there were few clerics to keep religion alive since many were killed or died in prison.

After the fall of the communist regime, Albanians had to be religiously re-educated; the infrastructure had to be rebuilt, and new clerics had to be trained. However, the surviving Albanian Catholic authorities lacked the required material and human resources, so help came from outside, notably from Italy, where Franciscan networks and the Vatican authorities mobilized to support the Catholic revival in Albania, and the Laç shrine was one of the prime symbols of this revival. This external support involved not only Laç but also all the Albanian Catholic communities, as in the mid-1990s, only 15% of the Catholic priests were Albanian—the others came from Italy, often from the Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian) communities (Clayer 2003).

According to Caroli (1994, pp. 21–23), the first trip to Albania by the Bolognese Friars Minor from the Antoniano took place in front of a crowd of pilgrims. The local workers and technicians to whom the construction materials were sent from Italy were ready in 1992 when, on 17 March, Ivan Dias, the Apostolic Nuncio, symbolically laid the foundation stone. A road, water, and light were the priorities that enabled the Italians and Albanians to work together in those crucial months. The road to the hill was 4 km long, and workers worked on it for months, digging, blasting, settling, and reconstructing (Caroli 1994, p. 26), while the aqueduct, after a spring was identified 2 km away, was ready on 11 June 1992. Dynamite, which had been used to destroy the shrine, was the best tool (Caroli 1994, p. 25). Finally, electricity was activated thanks to a generator brought by helicopter from Laç (Caroli 1994, p. 25).

Considerable discussion took place about whether to preserve the existing size of the shrine or to expand it. Critical decisions were entrusted to the ecclesiastical authorities and the Apostolic Nuncio, who held the position of Bishop for Albania. In the reconstruction process, materials salvaged from the remnants that survived the destruction were carefully preserved and repurposed. Additionally, newly sourced polychrome, marble-like rock was extracted from a nearby stone quarry to supplement the restoration efforts. Cement and stone were brought by mules from the surrounding area, as well as glass (Caroli 1994, pp. 26–27). The forecourt was then enlarged with the construction of some twenty dwellings and warehouses so that today, the forecourt accommodates some 5000 people, and a broadcasting system allows communication to everyone (Gjolaj 1994). According to the engineer, Kostandin Vllauh, for three years, the technicians and workers were only Albanians, and although the working conditions were very difficult, there were no serious accidents (Caroli 1994, p. 27). In October of the same year, the relics of Shna Ndou from the Basilica of Padua, where St Antony’s body is preserved and venerated, were received for the first time. After two and a half years of work, the Franciscan Assembly was inaugurated by Monsignor Rrok Mirdita (1939–2015), who formally approved the establishment of a Franciscan community at the shrine.

Caroli offers a range of practical details about the reconstruction of the shrine while trying to emphasize the brotherhood that would unite Albanian and Italian Catholics and Franciscans. A very remarkable development involved the placing of the relic inside the shrine, thereby resanctifying it. Furthermore, the transfer of the relic from Padua to Laç indicates the degree of cooperation between the Albanian and Italian Catholic communities, even if the role of the Albanian Catholic community is not fully clear. According to Clayer (2003), at that time, the Catholic Church was highly centralized under the management of authorities directly appointed by the Vatican. Among them was Rrok Mirdita, the Albanian from Montenegro who was appointed by John Paul II (1920–2015) as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Durrës–Tirana in 1993. Mirdita’s inauguration of the shrine suggests a degree of governance by central Albanian Catholic authorities, bolstered by Vatican officialdom. However, further investigation is needed concerning the role of the Franciscan communities and the Catholic ground-level milieux.

Additional pages from the ‘Notiziario’ suggest that the process of rebuilding the shrine was accompanied by ecumenical or, more accurately, nationalist rhetoric, which portrayed Albanians as being indifferent to religion. At the same time, it emphasized the presence of an inter-religious harmony (harmoni ndërfetare) that fostered peaceful coexistence among individuals belonging to different faiths (Endresen 2012). We read:

In the 13 June 1990 every religion came to pray to God to Shna Ndou, neither the police nor the communist youth organizations were able to prevent the faithful: a big popular picnic in the mount of Laç was organized and participated by 60,000 people.

(Pllumi 1994, p. 15)

The words of Zef Pllumi, an Albanian Franciscan, reveal the reproduction of a standardized narration. It seems to have become a leitmotif in the official speeches of all religious authorities, not only the Catholic ones, in which the peaceful religious essence of the Albanians is celebrated. The religious authorities also see this peaceful coexistence as a distinctive trait of Albanian culture (Endresen 2012). However, this narrative is not always reflected in social practice since religious identities can occasionally be a source of tension among Albanians, as happened in the Tropoja region during the late 1990s.

The Catholic authorities generally supported the nationalist rhetoric, and this resulted in some acknowledgment from the Albanian political authorities. For instance, Sali Berisha, the leader of the Democratic Party and President of the Republic at the time, strove to establish a good relationship with the Catholics and the Vatican, probably, according to Clayer (2003), to become closer diplomatically to Italy and to the West in general.

Pllumi highlights the substantial participation of Albanians in the worship of the remaining elements of the shrine immediately after the collapse of the regime, albeit potentially exaggerating the number of people involved. This suggests that the place retained its symbolic religious significance in the collective memory of the local population. It also indicates that the process of communist secularization did not entirely eradicate religion from Albanian society. Following the restoration of religious freedom, a significant number of individuals, for example, sought blessings and healing by venerating religious sites. However, this religious revival among Albanians was characterized by disorganization, heterogeneity, and a lack of institutionalization. As a result, only a few individuals possessed detailed knowledge of the specific practices associated with religious worship (Bria 2019). Moreover, in Laç, as in other places, there was a lack of material infrastructure to welcome and accommodate pilgrims. In a way, if the rebirth of the sanctuary was directed by the Albanian and Italian Catholic authorities, the site was certainly rebuilt to fulfill the strong devotion that started in Albanian society toward Shna Ndou.

This required the material reconstruction of the shrine to accommodate pilgrims wishing to venerate Shna Ndou and included a reorganization of practices, i.e., a normative re-institutionalization. It served to regulate the pilgrimage and concurrently legitimized the new Catholic authorities that settled in the shrine, i.e., the Franciscan community that still runs it today. As a result, materiality and immateriality, in terms of religious norms, practices, and knowledge, were dialectically intertwined.

The sacred place of Laç is an example of how the material destruction did not prevent the immaterial and material remains from surviving, and they survive in the memory of the place, in the sacredness that is sedimented in the soil, in the hill, in the space. Nevertheless, the materiality of the recent reconstruction has had a strong impact on continuing the tradition of the pilgrimage since it not only involved the building of the religious place—the church—par excellence, but it also involved some adjacent and pertinent places, statues, and infrastructures to support its management and good functioning.

Infrastructures and their history tell the same story: without Catholics and the Italian Catholic networks, a reconstruction that materially facilitates and accompanies the possibility of transforming collective religious memory into lived religion would not have been possible. The function of secular infrastructures is to bridge religious memory and religious life through the materialization of the visible, albeit informal, religious practice experienced by people of different religions. Moreover, although they are the outcome of a mixture of formal and informal forces, from a formal point of view, it is clear how the dominance of the Catholic Church, in terms of economic and organizational resources, weighs on the management and sets a boundary between what is receivable and what is not, with no room for replication. The place belongs to everyone, but the Catholic institution has greater formal power; they are the owners, and this status places them in a top-down position in relation to the more chaotic horizontal relationships from below of the people who live there.

4. The Shrine Today: The Power of Infrastructures

Today, the shrine is one of the most popular pilgrimage places and a major tourism destination in northern Albania, attracting visitors throughout the year but just a few in “normal” weeks. The flow increases especially on the shrine’s feast day of 13 June. Pilgrims arrive at the site the day before and they spend the night and the whole day there. We did the same during our fieldwork, spending time with people.

To arrive at the Shna Ndou shrine from the village of Laç, one must use a car or a similar mode of transport, although some pilgrims walk along the road as they come closer to the holy site and prepare for their religious experience. The last part of the walk is particularly arduous since it consists of a steep flight of steps leading directly to the monastery from the northwest. By car, the approximately four kilometers can be covered in 10 min, but on foot, it is an hour’s walk, and the pedestrian road is about three kilometers long.

On the night of 12 June, it is impossible to enter with one’s own means of transport unless one has a special permit informally granted to large cars or is recognized by the local police. During our fieldwork, we traveled in a collective minivan that, together with other pilgrims, took us from the northeast to the car park, which became a place for improvised street food and stalls selling sacred objects and souvenirs, a place for buying and selling clothes and shoes, and a meeting place.

The square leads to a natural path where a shrine containing the statue of Mary is the first religious signpost of the place, which looked initially as though it could be a festival, an open-air bazaar, and a gathering of Roma people. The statue materially signals the presence of a religious cult, and her features and clothing indicate that it is the Mary of Christians, who welcomes pilgrims (See Figure 1).

Proceeding along the path, two routes open up: a slope on the right leads up a steep flight of steps to a clearing where there is a large white cross, while continuing straight ahead, one reaches the space where the religious buildings and the sanctuary’s infrastructure are located. On the right are stone pits where pilgrims light candles, and on the left is an arcade where there is a shop with sacred objects, books, food, and drink, in front of which there are a few tables with chairs where pilgrims can stay indoors. Bathrooms on the underground level complete this part of the sanctuary—a secular space that supports the religious and non-religious activities taking place there.

Continuing on, one reaches the main square, which is bordered on the left by a building for confessions, at the bottom of which is an open-air altar where Mass is celebrated on feast days. On 13 June this area is set up with movable benches and chairs to allow the thousands of pilgrims to participate in the liturgy. There is also a very simple chapel, which welcomes pilgrims of all religions. It contains a single nave, wooden benches, and a small altar (see Figure 2) and its bare walls have small wooden crosses attached, equidistant from each other, that make up a Way of the Cross, along which pilgrims walk, touching or rubbing objects and clothes. The statue of Saint Anthony (see Figure 3), located in front of the building used for confessions, captures the attention and prayers of all who come. It is a very simple bronze statue on a pedestal. At the far end of the square, the monastery complex, where the community of Franciscan monks is based, dominates the valley.

Walking down the stairs from the square, one reaches a terrace for prayers, ablutions, and candles, and further down is a small grotto, enclosed by a grating, where pilgrims believe St Blaise (Shpella e Shën Vlashit) lived. This small cave is an object of veneration and would be filled with money and objects if it were not made inaccessible by the grating. It can also be reached from the steps that allow access on foot from the opposite side of the car park.

Secular infrastructures, therefore, have contributed and continue to contribute to the protection of people’s right to practice religion because they have both material and immaterial social power, especially in their informal dimension. As Amin writes: “Infrastructure is proposed as a gathering force and political intermediary of considerable significance in shaping the rights of the poor to the city and their capacity to claim those rights” (Amin 2014, p. 1). Infrastructures are social, but they are also symbolic and part of the religious experience, visible and invisible. As he describes in his article: ”There is an intricate play between the infrastructural aesthetic, social praxis and collective organization shaping the culture of the commons” (Amin 2014, p. 11).

At Shna Ndou, both formal and informal approaches have played a significant role in establishing and preserving religious infrastructures. Interestingly, the pilgrims see no gap between these different approaches, and the secular infrastructures have helped to foster closer collaboration between Italian and Albanian stakeholders, facilitating a shared pilgrimage experience that is informal and unofficial in nature. This bottom-up perspective is characterized by a genuine sense of people actively participating in the sacredness of the place. The infrastructures, therefore, have played a key supportive role in the process of democratization at the site and have contributed to sustaining its religious identity. They have acted as vital elements in both establishing and maintaining the religious presence, as well as ensuring the continuity of religious practices and the preservation of the shrine’s significance.

5. Broadcasting Shna Ndou Sainthood

When we arrived in front of the statue of Saint Anthony, we found many faithful, men and women, who used to place their smartphones on the statue […] Everyone had photos of their loved ones, mostly little ones, probably children or grandchildren, on their smartphone screens. In one hand they had their phones, in the other they had clothes, probably belonging to the same people in the photos. The emotional involvement was patent and the moment solemn: some cried, while others whispered: “Shna Ndou, Shna Ndou, bless them”.

This ethnographic note highlights how smartphones act both as virtual media and religious artifacts in mediating (Hoover 2006) religious practice and producing a dialectical reshaping of religious practices and virtual media (Campbell and Evolvi 2020). Smartphones indeed shape both the perception and the performance of religious practice, while the latter reshapes the use of the media, which thus become a religious artifact (Connelly 2013)—the sacralization of smartphones and digitalization of the sacred, in other words. The meanings and practices involved have both collective and individual dimensions (Campbell and Connelly 2020). For everyone, smartphones (see Figure 4) have become the main means of blessing for people who are not present. They act as a channel to amplify Shna Ndou’s sainthood, embedded in the sanctuary.

Space thus becomes more pervasive since it leads to the elaboration of a collective practice, framed by new technological developments. The advent of virtual media has become so pervasive and hegemonic (Couldry and Hepp 2013) that it is shaping religious practice by leading pilgrims to use smartphones in their pilgrimage practices. It is therefore a widespread practice, attesting to the incorporation of these media into everyday life. Smartphones have emerged as a vital element within the contemporary pilgrimage landscape, constituting new material infrastructures. Their compact design allows for the convenient transportation of multiple images, ensuring that each individual possesses and carries their own device. They play a pivotal role in mediating materiality, particularly in relation to corporeal engagement. Through these devices, sainthood and spiritual experiences can be broadcasted to individuals who may not be physically present at the pilgrimage site. By harnessing the capabilities of smartphones, the presence of revered figures and the dissemination of religious practices extend beyond the confines of physical boundaries, enabling a broader audience to partake in the pilgrimage experience.

Hence, smartphones function as transformative agents within the evolving pilgrimage landscape, acting as conduits of materiality. They facilitate the transport and dissemination of religious images and experiences, enhancing connectivity and enabling a broader engagement with the pilgrimage. Consequently, smartphones blur traditional boundaries of physical presence, shaping a new paradigm in which individuals can connect with and participate in the sacred journey irrespective of their geographical location. In this sense, they dematerialize religious practice, which is partly embedded in a multitasking object. At the same time, they rematerialize practice into something extemporaneously usable. The boundaries between the virtual and the material blur, are mediated through the bodily deeds of the faithful and are embedded into the digital images saved on phones (Campbell and Connelly 2020).

When placed on the statue, the photos on the phone function as avatars of the portrayed people and hence as make-believe. However, the pilgrims consider this practice to be authentic (Radde-Antweiler 2013) and one of the basic stages of the pilgrimage, as their emotional involvement attests. As one woman affirmed: “This is my daughter’s picture […] I want Shna Ndou to bless her and her family, I want them to stay healthy and have good luck”.

The use of smartphones as a religious artifact thus shapes religious norms while largely replicating its symbolic attributions. Shna Ndou’s sainthood is channeled and amplified but not scaled: the ultimate origin of his sainthood still stands in the sacred place and its objects, such as the statue. Imbued with its sainthood, the statue represents a metonymic item, referring to a higher ontological order to which pilgrims attributed mercy and intercession. Access to this order requires physical contact with the statue, a metonymic symbol of Shna Ndou’s sainthood (Werbner and Basu 1996), so smartphones have to be placed on the statue. This intertwining of materiality and technology necessitates a tangible connection, blurring the boundaries of virtuality through the physicality of the smartphone, which transforms into a religious artifact itself. Technology serves here as a tool to augment, support, and compensate for physical worship, rather than replacing it (Evolvi and Giorda 2021). It becomes an additional secular infrastructure of the religious space, facilitating a deeper engagement with the spiritual practice.

The convergence of the material and virtual realms creates a unified environment, compressing both space and time, especially through the use of videos and photos. This reshapes the perceptions and participation of pilgrims, offering new ways to experience and connect with the pilgrimage. The fusion of material and virtual elements forms a cohesive milieu that transcends traditional boundaries, allowing for a transformative and immersive engagement with the pilgrimage experience.

Smartphones are used contingently for religious practice; thus, their use is religiously bounded. At most, it is an everyday item incorporated into daily secular routines; it reflects not only the individual and extemporary shaping of the medium but also religion among Albanians. Religion, following the post-modern imperative, is lived à la carte, strategically and creatively, taking into account the individual needs of each pilgrim. This is a result of various dynamics involving religious practices and beliefs in post-socialist Albania. On the one hand, the legacy of communist secularization fosters a critical approach, eroding religious tradition in terms of authority, knowledge, and practices (Clayer 2003), while on the other hand, religious pluralization is engendered by the presence of various local, national, and foreign actors in both the material and virtual realms (Bria 2019). These factors have prompted an individualized approach to religion, which is sometimes considered secondary to national belonging. The nationalist adage “the true religion of the Albanians is Albanianism” has shaped the selfless, strategic, and subjective attitudes toward religion, considered a personal fact.

This situation involves a re-institutionalization of religion through a challenging of traditional practices and religious authorities. The use of smartphones expresses this development through the recasting of traditional pilgrimage practices. As some pilgrims told us, previously, people used to place paper photos of their loved ones on the statue. The smartphone has largely replaced this practice, fulfilling the needs and wishes of the Albanians, and the local Catholic authorities allow this innovation without any qualms. This new practice, therefore, is the result of a bottom-up recasting, which the authorities strategically allowed to avoid possible delegitimization, and it is also a reframing of the normative features of pilgrimage (Connelly 2013).

The pilgrims attribute subjective meanings at an individual level that make the practice authentic, setting up a link between body, practice, and religious artifact. People often talk about their family members: “I came here without my daughter because she was working […] the picture is really of her”; “My mother is old, she can no longer move, so I bless her photo”. These testimonies shed light on the dual nature of smartphones, which serve as both sacred and secular objects. This phenomenon is further evidenced by the widespread practice of taking photos during the pilgrimage, as depicted in Figure 5. These captured images not only contribute to the visual documentation but also hold symbolic significance in representing the religious experience. They serve as tangible reminders and representations of people’s spiritual journey and encapsulate the essence of the pilgrimage and its personal meaning to the individuals involved.

Smartphones allow for many more photos to be taken and stored than before, and some end up on social media, where they are shared by a wider audience. The result is the popularization of pilgrimage rather than its virtualization, where religion is idealized as almost a commodified image. The sharing of photos contributes to the promotion of pilgrimage as a pop practice, which could result in its secularization. Yet, the sharing of photos could paradoxically increase the attractiveness of pilgrimage as a religious practice. Thus, the use of social networks may also imply a return of the religious, although this is modulated by the language and modalities of internet sharing and access.

Many people stream video calls, allowing them to virtually experience the pilgrimage and receive the grace of Shna Ndou from a distance. It is about a brokered sainthood, due to opportunity and necessity (some people could not make the pilgrimage because they were ill). The blessing of Shna Ndou has expanded its reach through a dynamic process of glocalization, extending not only to various regions within the country but also to the diaspora around the world. This spatial movement is not solely limited to pilgrims physically traveling to the shrine, but rather the shrine itself extends its influence to reach pilgrims through modern means. In this context, individuals actively participate in the practice of receiving Shna Ndou’s virtual sainthood as they engage with the shrine through smartphones and other digital devices. This interactive experience allows people to indirectly partake in the spiritual practice, bridging the physical distance and connecting with the blessings of Shna Ndou regardless of their geographical location. In the case of the pictures, the person blessed is a passive subject, but during video calls, pilgrims turn the practice into an interactive one, sharing virtual practice, and sainthood reaches people who may reside in other parts of the world. The pilgrimage thus becomes a real-time experience, which can be lived from one location to another (Helland 2013). It loses some of its locally attributed meanings but acquires new ones, associated with those who gain access to this real-time experience.

6. Some Concluding Remarks

With regard to the two themes introduced at the beginning of the paper, the pilgrimage to Laç is based on infrastructural materials built between Albania and Italy thanks to the collaboration of religious and secular institutions. This materiality is also virtual, mediated by digital media and communication spaces; the pilgrimage is expanded virtually, and the sanctity of Shna Ndou is enhanced, becoming a religious materiality and virtual sainthood.

We thus have a triple subversion of fields, or rather of the usual field perceptions, with a silencing of dichotomies. First of all, the religious is not only spiritual, as shown by the materiality of the place and practices; objects, bodies, materials, and infrastructures are part of and bring substance to the religious space of the pilgrimage. At the same time, the religious is also bound up with the secular, in the sense that it is possible, and it has existed and survived thanks to both the religious institutions involved and the entirely secular activities and practices that take place there. Third, the material and the virtual form a single space, reshaping perceptions and participation in pilgrimage. The sacred is thus both material and virtual, and people become, along with material objects, the active agents of pilgrimage.

This shows how religious practice has been shaped through the adoption of virtual communication patterns that shape its perception, fruition, and construction. Smartphones function as a religious artifact, fully embedded in the materiality and practice of pilgrimage. This function provides room for an appropriation of the smartphone by pilgrims according to their own ways of experiencing the practice of pilgrimage. As a result, religious practices are virtualized, and Shna Ndou’ s sainthood is broadcasted.