Catholic priest in Detroit regrets remarks about Muslims

A Catholic priest in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, said in a March 13 statement that he regretted some of the words he used in a May 2007 speech that recently emerged on YouTube. Rev. Anton Kcira of St. Paul Albanian Catholic parish in Rochester Hills MI was apparently chastised by the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit for the speech that came shortly after 3 Albanian Muslim men were arrested in New Jersey for allegedly plotting to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix. Leaders of the sizeable Muslim community of Michigan approached Archbishop Allen Vigneron to complain and have since demanded that the cleric should apologize and also receive sanctions from his church.

In a statement released on March 13, Rev. Kcira wrote ‘I was angry, very angry, about the lack of response in the Albanian and Kosovar communities against the criminals who planned to kill American soldiers," he said. "The USA and NATO have done so much for our nation and our peoples over the years, and by not condemning the Albanian criminals, we appeared ungrateful." In the 2007 speech, Rev. Kcira was recorded to say of Radovan Milosevic – the Serbian leader during the bloody fratricidal Balkan wars of the 1990s, "Milosevic should have done to the 1.9 million dogs in Kosovo what he did to the 260,000 dogs in Srebrenica."

Apparently videotaped in 2007, the speech appeared on YouTube but has since disappeared. Dawud Walid, leader of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations was one of the Muslim leaders who met with Archbishop Allen Vigneron. He is demanding that Rev.Kcira should apologize to the Muslim community and that he should be sanctioned. A local imam also expressed displeasure with the priest's statements.

In a YouTube video posted by the Archdiocese of Detroit, Rev. Kcira said that he used "hyperbole and exaggeration...to make my point." "In doing so, I used some wrong words," the priest says in the video. "I described massacre victims with provocative names. That wasn't right. That was my anger talking not my heart." The elderly priest added that "some people are more focused on the words I used in frustration three years ago rather than why I was so angry."

The archdiocese also released a video in which Archbishop Vigneron says that Muslims should be treated with respect while underscoring the need for good relations.
The Detroit metropolitan area is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States.

See video here.

See Archbishop Vigneron here.