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Kosovo

Church Records

For information about records for non-Christian religions in Kosovo, go to the Religious Records page.

Historical Background

Kosovo is a secular state with no state religion; freedom of belief, conscience and religion is explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution of Kosovo. The society of Kosovo is strongly secularised and is ranked first in Southern Europe and ninth in the world as free and equal for tolerance towards religion and atheism.

In the 2011 census, 95.6% of the population of Kosovo was counted as Muslim and 3.7% as Christian including 2.2% as Roman Catholic and 1.5% as Eastern Orthodox. Protestants, although recognised as a religious group in Kosovo by the government, were not represented in the census.

Christianity has a long and continuous history in Kosovo which can be traced back to the Roman invasion of the region. During the early and late Middle Ages, the entire Balkan Peninsula had been Christianized initially by the Romans and subsequently by the Byzantine Empire. Followers of the Roman Catholic Church are predominantly Albanians with ethnic Serbs following the Eastern Orthodox Church. In 2008, Protestant pastor Artur Krasniqi, primate of the Kosovo Protestant Evangelical Church, claimed that "as many as 15,000" Kosovar Albanians had converted to Protestantism since 1985.

Information Recorded in the Records

Different denominations, different time periods, and practices of different record keepers will effect how much information can be found in the records. This outline will show the types of details which might be found (best case scenario):

Baptisms

In Catholic and Anglican records, children were usually baptized a few days after birth, and therefore, the baptism record proves date of birth. Other religions, such as Baptists, baptized at other points in the member's life. Baptism registers might give:

baptism date the infant's name parents' names father's occupation

status of legitimacy occasionally, names of grandparents names of witnesses or godparents, who may be relatives

birth date and place the family's place of residence death information, as an added note or signified by a cross

Marriages

Marriage registers can give:

the marriage date the names of the bride and groom indicate whether the bride and groom were single or widowed their ages

birth dates and places for the bride and groom their residences their occupations

birthplaces of the bride and groom parents' names (after 1800) the names of previous spouses and their death dates names of witnesses, who might be relatives.

Burials

Burial registers may give:

the name of the deceased the date and place of death or burial the deceased's age place of residence

cause of death the names of survivors, especially a widow or widower deceased's birth date and place parents' names, or at least the father's name

How to Find Records

Digital Copies of Church Records in the FamilySearch Catalog

Watch for digitized copies of church records to be added to the collection of the FamilySearch Library. Some records might have viewing restrictions, and can only be viewed at a FamilySearch Center near you, and/or by members of supporting organizations. To find records:

a. Click on the records of Serbia. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008

b. Click on Places within Serbia and a list of towns will appear.

c. Click on your town if it appears, or the location which you believe was the parish which served your town or village.

d. Click on the "Church records" topic. Click on the blue links to specific record titles.

e. Some combination of these icons will appear at the far right of the listing for the record. . The magnifying glass indicates that the record is indexed. Clicking on the magnifying glass will take you to the index. Clicking on the camera will take you to an online digital copy of the records.

Writing for Records

You will probably need to write to or email the national archives, the diocese, or local parish priests to find records. See Letter Writing Guide for Genealogy for help with composing letters. For letters to Catholic churches of archives, then use an Albanian translation service. For letters to Orthodox churches or archives, use a Serbian translation service.

• Maps.me Church Listings for Kosovo
• Google Maps search results for churches in Kosovo Be sure to scroll through all the pages. There will be several pages with 20 entries each.

Catholic Church Records

Writing to a Local Parish

• Google Maps search results for churches in Kosovo Be sure to scroll through all the pages. There will be several pages with 20 entries each.

Historical Background

The Catholic Church has a population in Kosovo[a] of approximately 65,000 in a region of roughly 2 million people. Another 60,000 Kosovar Catholics are outside the region, mainly for work. They are mainly ethnic Albanians, with a few Croats. Kosovo was conquered by the Ottoman Empire along with the other remnants of the Serbian Empire in the period following the Battle of Kosovo (1389). Although the Ottomans did not force the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian population to convert to Islam, there was strong social pressure (such as not having to pay the jizya) as well as political expediency to do so, which ethnic Albanians did in far greater numbers (including the entire nobility) than Serbs, Greeks and others in the region. Many Albanian Catholics converted to Islam in the 17th and 18th centuries, despite attempts by Roman Catholic clergy to stop them. After the Ottoman Empire abolished the death penalty for apostasy from Islam by the Edict of Toleration 1844, several groups of crypto-Catholics in Prizren, Peja and Gjakova were recognized as Catholics by the Ottoman Grand Vizier in 1845. When the Laramans of Letnica asked the district governor and judge in Gjilan to recognise them as Catholics, they were refused however, and subsequently imprisoned, and then deported to Anatolia, from where they returned in November 1848 following diplomatic intervention. In 1856, a further Tanzimat reform improved the situation, and no further serious abuse was reported. The greater part of converts of Laramans, almost exclusively new-borns, took place between 1872 and 1924.

Orthodox Church Records

Writing for Records

• Google Maps search results for Orthodox churches in Kosovo

Historical Background

The presence of Serbian Orthodox bishops in Lipljan and Prizren was first recorded in the 10th century. In 1219, the Serbian Orthodox Church split from the Greek Orthodox Church, and Greek bishops were expelled from Kosovo. The See of the Serbian Orthodox Church was moved from Žiča in present-day Serbia to Peć/Peja in present-day Kosovo in 1252, thus making it the religious and cultural centre of Serbian Orthodoxy.

Protestant Evangelical Church Records

Writing for Records

• Google Maps search results for Protestant churches in Kosovo

Historical Background

The Kosovo Protestant Evangelical Church (Albanian: Kisha Protestante Ungjillore e Kosovës) (KPEC) is a Protestant church network based in Pristina, Kosovo. It is one of the four protected major religions in the Kosovo Law of Religious Freedoms.[4] There are between 10,000 and 15,000 Kosovar Albanians that follow this church, 6,000 in Pristina alone. There are 42 churches in all of Kosovo.

The Kosovo Protestant church (and the Albanian Protestant Church) was founded by Gjerasim Qiriazi but there were Protestant efforts previously. The British and Foreign Bible Society was a Protestant-based institution targeting the Ottoman Empire. There was a minor Protestant reformation in the Balkans after the Cyrniea war in 1856 after the Ottoman Turks had to give up. Albania was the sole country in the entire Ottoman Empire to take in the reform beliefs.

By 1882, however, the Albanian Evangelical Church family grew up to 36 believers. The first Protestant church was born in Manastir. In that year, prayers and sermons were conducted in the Albanian language. In 1890, a second church was opened in Korça, led by the newly Christian Gjerasim Qiriazi. Qiriazi was also the head of the first national society within Albania named "Evangelical Brotherhood". As a result, Gjerasim Qiriazi is considered the father of the Kosovo Protestant Evangelical Church.

The church was officially inaugurated on June 16, 1985, by the leadership of Artur Krasniqi. There is a church in downtown Pristina, that was built after the church was inaugurated in 1985. Since 1999, after the Kosovo War, more Kosovo Albanians have been converting to the church.