Leone Giovanni Battista Nigris (27 August 1884 – 21 September 1964) was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who worked in Albania.
[1] On 18 August 1938, Pope Pius XI appointed him titular archbishop of Philippi and Apostolic Delegate to Albania.
On 11 November 1939, Pope Pius XII named him Apostolic Administrator of Southern Albania.
[3] In this traditional Orthodox rather than Catholic region of Albania he guided Catholic missionaries to a less aggressive approach to conversions, advising the less aggressive approach of persuasion by providing models of virtuous life rather than through argument; he was suspicious of mass conversions.
[4] In 1945 the new Communist government, intent on establishing a national church without ties to Rome, had him arrested an expelled from Albania as persona non grata.