The Orthodox Church of Albania

Autocephaly was declared in 1922 and recognised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1937. In 1967 Albania declared itself the first officially atheist state in the world and closed or destroyed every church and mosque in the country; clergy were imprisoned or shot and public worship of any kind was a criminal offence for more than twenty years. When the regime fell there were reportedly twenty-two surviving Orthodox clergy in the whole country. The church was rebuilt from that point from 1991 under Archbishop Anastasios, and now has hundreds of parishes, a seminary and a full hierarchy, which is one of the clearest cases in modern Orthodox history of a local church raised from nothing.