“Today too there are crosses: those two destroyed skyscrapers are like the Cross above the earth. We must form projects for learning and teaching love” After the terrorist attacks that recently struck the United States, a fervent appeal for peace has been made by Cardinal Miloslav Vlk , Archbishop of Prague. In the 1970s, Vlk made a vow to the Crucifix on a cold winter’s day, when he was cleaning the windows of the shops of what was still a Communist State: that was his job for almost ten years. Deprived of any possibility of exercising his ministry, the young Catholic priest found in the Cross “a way for dialogue in those difficult conditions”, by loving even his enemies. In this moment of tension at the international level, what message of hope and of peace have you to give to those who speak of vendetta, of hatred and of war and to those who fear for peace? “I’m convinced we must learn from history, from the events that have already happened. We have seen, and can see yet again, that hatred solves nothing. We have a strong experience, that of the second world war, whose roots were hatred for other races. After the end of the war, it became transformed into the cold war: once again class hatred. Thousands died as a result. It seems to me we have not learned enough from the history we have actually experienced”. Or perhaps we no longer remember? “We don’t reflect sufficiently and fail to recognize the reality. After the cold war had ended, it became transformed into another kind of war: the war of terrorism, with the same hatred, which at times may even be disseminated by certain religious currents. Hatred has reached the level we have seen in the terrorist attacks on the United States and now we are all suffering from shock : hitherto we had failed to realize the situation”. What can we learn from a tragedy like this? “The lesson to be learned from what has happened is the need to turn over a fresh leaf, the need to change, because man is created for love. So many plans and programmes are drawn up: what is now needed is to find a new programme, not a vendetta that means conducting ourselves in the same way as the men of violence. We need to find a new model”. What model, in your view? “I am convinced that this new model is the Cross. I don’t think we need to carry the cross, but we do need to know and recognize that the Cross is an extreme revelation of the extreme love of God. Jesus had so many reasons for revenge: he always did good to everyone and the world’s response to him was death, crucifixion. He had the power and the strength to revenge himself; instead he said: ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’. This is a model. We must forms projects for learning and teaching love. Jesus on the cross is raised and exalted over the earth because we can see him so clearly. Today too there are crosses: those two destroyed skyscrapers are like the Cross above the earth so that we may understand. I don’t see any other way”. Must interreligious dialogue also follow the same road? “Exactly the same. We must die to ourselves, which means: first remaining silent, opening ourselves to the other person, listening to him, understanding his sorrows and his motivations, and then the other person will have the chance to empty himself into my void, so we will understand each other better. The Cross is the model of existential dialogue between God and man, but also of human beings between each other”. So we are called always to take the first step? “Of course. Whoever does not do so, does not accept the Cross and its teaching: that’s how Jesus saved the world, and two millennia are proof of the truth of this salvation. I can say so, because my own experience of life, during the years of Communism, leads just in this direction: I don’t affirm so just as a theory, but as the expression of my own experience”. What do you remember, in particular? “At the beginning of Communism, in the 1950s, we awaited salvation from the Western democratic states, from American arms, from human efforts. God slowly made us understand, as a Church, that the path of the future was quite another”. Laura Badaracchi
