[7][8] The Byzantine rite was brought to Italy in the 15th century by Albanian exiles fleeing from Albania, Epirus and Morea because of persecution by Ottoman Turks of Muslim faith.

The Albanian ethno-linguistic group of Italy has managed to maintain its identity, having in the clergy the strongest guardian and the fulcrum of ethnic identification.

The Albanians of Sicily and Calabria, from the eighteenth to the present, were bringing the monastery back to life, where most of its monks, abbots and students were and are Italo-Albanian.

The spread of Greek monasticism in Italy received a strong impulse from the Rashidun Caliphate invasion of the Levant and Egypt, and later from the ban on religious images or icons.

The monks naturally retained their rite, and as the bishops were not infrequently chosen from their number, the diocesan liturgy, under favourable conditions, could easily be changed, especially since the Lombard occupation of the inland regions of Southern Italy cut off the Greeks in the South from communication with the Latin Church.

Still, it was not rapid enough to suit the Byzantine emperors, who feared that those regions would once again fall under the influence of the West, as had the Duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna.

Another potent factor was the reform of Pope Gregory VII, who in his efforts to repress marriage among the Latin clergy found no small obstacle in the example of the Greek priests.

In the course of time the Norman princes gained the affection of their Greek subjects by respecting their rite, which had strong support in the numerous Basilian monasteries (in the 15th century there were still seven of them in the Archdiocese of Rossano alone).

At Reggio, Calabria, Count Ruggiero in 1092 had given the Greeks the church of S. Maria della Cattolica, whose clergy had a Protopope, exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop; this was the case until 1611.

[10] Besides the first large emigration of Albanians which took place between 1467 and 1470, after the death of the celebrated Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg (when his daughter, who had become the Princess of Bisignano, invited her countrymen to the Kingdom of Naples), there were two others, one under Ottoman Empire Sultan Selim II (1566–1574), directed to the ports along the Adriatic Sea and to Livorno; the other about 1740.

Finally Pope Clement XII, in 1736, founded the Corsini College in the ancient Abbey of San Benedetto Ullano in the charge of a resident bishop or archbishop of the Greek Rite.

When Clement XII established the Corsini College at San Benedetto Ullano in 1736, he placed it in charge of a resident bishop or archbishop of the Greek Rite.

[2] One month before the foundation of the Eparchy of Piana dei Greci in 1937, the Byzantine-Rite Monastery of Saint Mary of Grottaferrata, not far from Rome, was given the status of a territorial abbacy, separating it from the jurisdiction of the local bishop.

[13] In October 1940, the three ordinaries held an inter-eparchial synod for preserving their Byzantine traditions and unity with an Orthodox Church of Albania observation delegation.

[3] In the church there are the following religious institutions: the Italo-Albanian Basilian Monks Order of Grottaferrata (present in Lazio, Calabria and Sicily), the Suore Collegine della Sacra Famiglia, and the congregation of the Italo-Albanian Basilian Sisters Figlie di Santa Macrina (present in Sicily, Calabria, Albania and Kosovo).

Italo-Albanian communities were formed in the cities of Milan, Turin, Rome, Naples, Bari, Lecce, Crotone, Cosenza and Palermo, as well as in Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Canada, Argentina and Brazil.

Over the centuries, albeit limited, there have been religious contacts between Albanians of Italy with the Christian East (monasteries of Crete) and Albania (Archdiocese of Shkodër, Durrës, Himarë).