Enver Hoxha himself spearheaded the campaign against the Catholic church. In 1952, for example, he purged Tuk Jakova, the only Catholic member of the Politburo and previously one of Hoxha's closest collaborators, because he had allegedly befriended the Catholic clergy. In his speech to the Second Party Congress in 1952, in an attempt to justify Jakova's purge, Hoxha said: "Comrade Tuk Jakova, in contradiction to the political line of the Party and of the state concerning religion generally and the Catholic clergy in particular, has not properly understood and has not properly acted against the Catholic clergy. Without seeing the great danger of the reactionary clergy, Comrade Tuk Jakova has not hated them in sufficient measure...." A new policy aimed at the complete destruction of organized religion was enunciated by Hoxha in a speech to the Party's Central Committee on February 6, 1967. Calling for an intensified cultural-education struggle against religious beliefs and declaring that the only religion for an Albanian should be Albanianism, he assigned the antireligious mission to the youth movement. By May of the same year religious institutions were forced to relinquish 2,169 churches, mosques, cloisters, and shrines, most of which were converted into cultural centers for young people. As the literary monthly _Nendori_ (November) in its September 1967 issue reported the event, the youth had thus "created the first atheist nation in the world." According to Western correspondents in Tirana, the procedure employed in seizing the places of worship was to assemble the villagers or parishioners in order to discuss Hoxha's speech and to take measures to eliminate what the regime referred to as harmful survivals of religious customs. A decision was then taken to ask the government for permission to close a church, mosque, or monastery. A few days later the government, stating that it was following the will of the people, would issue orders to close the house of worship. Drastic measures were reportedly taken in cases where the clergy opposed the government order. The strongest resistance came from the Catholic clergy, resulting in the detention of some twenty priests. The cloister of the Franciscan order in Shkoder was set afire in the spring of 1967, resulting in the death of four monks. The Catholic cathedral in Tirana had its facade removed, and on June 4, 1967, it was taken over by the government and converted into a museum. A similar fate befell the Catholic cathedrals in Shkoder and Durres.