During our visit, the conversation turned to communities that had kept their language and religious traditions. The speaker contrasted the Byzantine rite with the Latin rite, and I shared the clip with a caption referring to twenty villages.
That number should not be read as a verified total for all Arbëreshë communities. Villages, parishes and jurisdictions are different things. The Eparchy of Lungro’s own historical account describes Byzantine Catholic worship, prayer in Greek and Albanian, and the preservation of a distinct heritage within the Catholic Church. The eparchy’s historical account.
What stayed with me was the living connection between language and worship. Hearing people discuss how they maintained those traditions gives another dimension to the churches and places we visited. The original conversation is preserved here alongside that distinction about the numbers.
Original social post · 2026-10-13