Preng Doçi was born in Paraspor neighborhood of Bulgër, a village near Lezha, back then Ottoman Empire, and today's Rubik, Mirditë municipality[3] on 25 February 1846.

Doçi had previously traveled to Cetinje, capital of Principality of Montenegro, in order to seek financial and military assistance by the Montenegrins.

[4] With the intervention of Armenian Patriarch Stefan Azarian, he received a fake name Pére Achile and was sent to Rome with the condition of not returning to Albania.

[6] After staying few months in Antivari, with the intervention of Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni of the Propaganda Fide, Doçi was sent to the west coast of the Americas, Newsfoundland, Wayne, Pennsylvania, and New Brunswick, where he worked as a missionary until 1881.

In 1888, after years of petitioning and with the intercession of the patriarch of Constantinople, Doçi finally received permission from the Ottoman authorities to return to Albania.

[9] In 1897 he traveled to Vienna to propose the creation of an autonomous Catholic principality in northern Albania under Mirdita leadership and would politically dominate within a wider confederation of Albanian statelets.

[6][9] Austria-Hungary supported his proposal however found its implementation would be unfeasible and opposed by Muslim Albanians and the Ottoman Empire.