Some heartening news from one war-ravaged corner of the planet: people are returning to the Church:

Although armed conflict in Kosovo ended nearly a decade ago, the capital city still feels like a place hit recently by war or natural disaster. Electricity goes out often, water is strictly rationed, U.N. jeeps are ubiquitous and people look harried.

Along the main road leading to Pristina, every other lot is full of old cars, stolen from other European countries and picked clean or abandoned by families who fled the war.

But during Sunday Masses at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, an active Catholic community packs the pews. There are families and old people, a full-voiced choir, eight young altar servers and long lines to receive the Eucharist.

The church, located in a working-class neighborhood, was built in the 1960s after the communist regime demolished the Catholic cathedral in the city’s center.

“We are small but very alive. Children from every grade are in catechism (classes),” said Father Albert Jakaj, 30, whose identical twin is a priest in Montenegro. “People are coming back to their old faith. We have whole families coming back to their roots.”

The priest described a small village where 10 families came to him asking to receive the sacraments: “They want to be back with their traditional faith. It’s not conversion but a strong returning.”

Kosovar Albanians “have lived through a national crisis that centered on national identity as well as on religious identity. … But our Catholic roots are very old,” he said.

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