Born in
Elbasan on September 23, 1912, Papamihali studied Philosophy and Theology in the
Pontifical Greek College of Saint Athanasius in
Rome, near the
Angelicum, where he was ordained a priest on 1 December 1935 by
Giovanni Mele, the
Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic Church bishop of
Lungro and all
Byzantine Rite Italo-Albanians on the Italian mainland. Papamihali returned to
Independent Albania in 1936 and served as a parish priest in Elbasan,
Korçë,
Berat,
Lushnjë, and
Pogradec. Beginning in 1944, he became the main superior of the
Albanian Greek Catholic Church. He was arrested by the
communist authorities in Korçë on 31 October 1946 and was later convicted as an
enemy of the people. On 5 August 1947, Papamihali was sentenced by the courts to 5 years imprisonment and forced labor and was transferred to Korçë and later Maliq where he died. He was buried alive by labour camp guards in a marsh, after he had fallen from exhaustion, on 26 October 1948. Following the
fall of communism in Albania, he was beatified at
Shkodër along with thirty-seven other Albanian Catholic martyrs on 5 November 2016. ==References==