A Catholic priest stood at the altar in a hilltop church for a mass baptism, immersing dozens of heads in water and drawing a cross with his finger on each forehead.
Then he rejoiced that Christianity had restored souls in a land where the vast majority of people were Muslims – as were the men, women and children who stood before him.
The ceremony was one of many in recent months in Kosovo, a former Serbian territory populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, which declared itself an independent state in 2008. In the population census last spring, 93 percent of the population declared themselves as Muslims, and only 1.75 percent as Roman Catholics.
A small number of ethnic Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, are urging their ethnic relatives to see the church as an expression of their identity. They call it a “return movement,” an attempt to revive a pre-Islamic past that they see as an anchor for Kosovo’s place in Europe and an obstacle to religious extremism spilling over from the Middle East.
Until the Ottoman Empire conquered what is now Kosovo and other areas of the Balkans in the 14th century, bringing Islam with them, ethnic Albanians were primarily Catholic. Under the Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, most of the inhabitants of Kosovo changed their religion.
By reversing that process, said Father Fran Kolaj, a priest who performed baptisms outside the village of Llapushnik, ethnic Albanians can regain their original identity.
Ethnic Albanians, who trace their roots to an ancient people called the Illyrians, live mainly in Albania, a country on the Adriatic Sea. But they also make up the vast majority of the population in neighboring Kosovo and more than a quarter of the population in North Macedonia.
In the church where the baptisms took place, nationalist emblems are pushed alongside religious iconography. A double-headed eagle, the symbol of Albania, decorates the tower and the screen behind the altar.
“It is time to return to the place where we belong – with Christ,” said Fr. Fran Kolaj in an interview.
In many Muslim countries, renouncing Islam can bring severe punishment, sometimes even death. So far, baptism ceremonies held in Kosovo have not sparked violent opposition, although there have been some angry condemnations online. (It is not known how many conversions have taken place so far.)
But historians, who agree that Christianity was present in Kosovo long before the Ottoman Empire brought Islam, question the thinking behind the movement.
“From a historical perspective, what they are saying is true,” said Durim Abdullahu, a historian from the University of Pristina. But, he added, “their logic means that we should all become pagans” because the people who lived in the territory of today’s Kosovo before the arrival of Christianity, and later Islam, were unbelievers.
Like many other Kosovars, Mr. He told Abdullah that he believed that Serbia, which has a majority Orthodox Christian population, helped fuel the return movement as a way to sow discord in Kosovo. While Serbia has been for a long time accused of undermining the stability of Kosovothere is no evidence that he promoted conversions.
In 2022, archaeologists discovered the remains of a sixth-century Roman church near Pristina, and in 2023 they found a mosaic with an inscription indicating that the early Albanians, or at least a people possibly related to them, were Christians.
Still, Christophe Goddard, a French archaeologist working at the site, said it was wrong to impose modern concepts of nation and ethnicity on ancient peoples. “This is not history but modern politics,” he said.
Traces of Kosovo’s distant pre-Islamic past also survived in a small number of families who clung to Roman Catholicism despite the risk of being ostracized by their Muslim neighbors.
Marin Sopi, 67, a retired Albanian language teacher who was baptized 16 years ago, said his family had been “undercover Catholics” for generations. As a child, he recalled, he and his family celebrated Ramadan with Muslim friends but secretly celebrated Christmas at home.
“We were Muslims during the day and Christians at night,” he said. Since becoming a Christian, he said, 36 members of his extended family have officially left Islam.
Islam and Christianity in Kosovo largely coexisted peacefully — until Orthodox Christian soldiers and nationalist paramilitary groups from Serbia began burning mosques and driving Muslims from homes in the 1990s.
Foreign Christian missionaries stayed away from Kosovo’s conversion campaign. But some ethnic Albanians living in Western Europe have offered support, seeing a return to Catholicism as Kosovo’s best hope to one day join the European Union, a predominantly Christian club.
Arber Gashi, an ethnic Albanian living in Switzerland, traveled to Kosovo to attend a baptism ceremony at a church in Llapushnik, which overlooks the scene of a major battle in 1998 between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
He and other activists worry that funding for mosque construction and other activities from Turkey and Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with their more conservative approaches, threatens Kosovo’s traditionally relaxed form of Islam. Most of that money went to economic development projects unrelated to religion.
In the center of Pristina there is a statue in honor of Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize of Albanian origin, and it is dominated by a large Roman Catholic cathedral built after the war with Serbia. But Turkey is currently financing the construction of a huge new mosque that will be even bigger.
Mr. Gashi also said he feared the return of Islamic extremism that emerged in Kosovo’s first, chaotic decade of independence. On some points, Kosovo has provided more recruits to the Islamic State in Syria than any other European country.
Christianity, on the other hand, would open the way to Europe, he said.
Government repression in recent years silenced extremism and reinforced Kosovo’s traditionally relaxed stance on Islam. The streets of Pristina are full of bars serving a wide variety of alcohol. Veiled women are extremely rare.
Gezim Gjin Hajrullahu, 57, a teacher who was among those recently baptized in Llapushnik, said he joined the Catholic Church “not for faith alone” but for “our national identity” as ethnic Albanians. His wife also converted.
The Prime Minister of Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian, Albin Kurti, in an interview in Pristina, downplayed the importance of religion for Albanian identity. “For us, religions have come and gone, but we are still here,” he said. “For Albanians, in terms of identity, religion has never been in the first place.”
This distinguishes them from other peoples in the now-defunct, multi-ethnic federal state of Yugoslavia, which fell apart during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s. The main warring parties in the early stages of the conflict spoke mostly the same language and looked similar, but they were clearly distinguished from each other by religion – Serbs by Orthodox Christianity, Croats by Roman Catholicism and Bosniaks by Islam.
Activists of the return movement believe that ethnic Albanians also need to cement their national loyalty with religion in the form of Roman Catholicism.
Boik Breca, a former Muslim active in the movement, insisted that the Catholic Church is not an intrusion of foreigners, but a true expression of Albanian identity and proof that Kosovo belongs to Europe.
He said his interest in Christianity began when Kosovo, along with Serbia, was still part of Yugoslavia. He was sent to a prison on the coast of Croatia as a political prisoner. Many of his fellow prisoners were Catholics, he recalled, and they helped awaken what he now sees as his true faith and the belief that “all our ancestors were Catholics.”
“To be a true Albanian,” he said, “you must be a Christian.”
This view has been widely contested, including by Mr. Kurti, the Prime Minister.
“I don’t believe that,” he said.
The current push against Islam began with a meeting in October 2023 in Dečani, a bastion of nationalist sentiment near Kosovo’s border with Albania. The meeting, attended by nationalist intellectuals and former fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army, discussed ways to promote “Albanianness” and decided that Christianity would help.
“From today we are no longer Muslims”, present he saidadopting the slogan: “Being only Albanians”.
The meeting led to the formation of what was initially called the Movement for the Abandonment of the Islamic Faith, a provocative name that was largely discarded in favor of the “Return Movement.”
From his office in Pristina, decorated with a model of Mecca, the Grand Mufti of Kosovo, Naim Ternava, watched the return with anxiety and horror. Pressure on Muslims to convert to Christianity, he said, risks disrupting religious harmony and is being used by “foreign agents to spread hatred of Islam.”
“Our mission,” he added, “is to keep people in our faith.” I tell people to stay in Islam.”
