The “moral confusion of Lithuanian society” is “like a slime that spreads from the hovel of an alcoholic peasant to the state buildings of parliament and the government”. The archbishop of Kaunas Sigitas Tamkevicius did not mince words in speaking in Parliament on the occasion of the annual “Day of Mourning and Hope”, celebrated in recent days to mark the anniversary for the first Soviet mass deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia (14 June 1941). The archbishop deplored “the loss of the foundations for the construction of the future of Lithuania”. He denounced “the models of corruption” that “are raising new generations to worship money”, that “ridicule love for country and sneer at those who sacrifice themselves in its name”. Recalling the genocide perpetrated by the Soviet regime, of which at least a third of the population of the country was the victim, according to the Centre of Lithuanian research on genocide and resistance, the archbishop declared: “Today there are new forms of slavery, the invisible chains of affluence”, and he expressed the hope for “a higher moral level in the political class” to oppose “the widespread tendency to replace the precepts of the Ten Commandments with the opinions of the media”.
