“Let us renew the mentality of consecrated life and live a community life based on Christ, thus giving witness to the contemporary world that does not understand the traditional language of religion”, declared Cardinal Audrys Backis, archbishop of Vilnius, in addressing the participants at the first national congress of consecrated life, held in recent weeks at Kaunas to mark the 40th anniversary of Vatican II’s decree “Perfectae caritatis” on the renewal of religious life. The aim of the meeting, whose main speaker was the Italian religious Fabio Ciardi of the missionary oblates of the Immaculate Mary, was to reflect on the identity of consecrated life and furnish information on its various forms to Lithuanian society. “The congress concluded a 15-year period of the re-establishment of religious congregations after their abolition by the Soviet regime”, pointed out Sister Igne Marijosiute, president of the Council of the Conference of Superiors Major. According to Sister Igne, “in contemporary European society, diseased by individualism, divisions and mutual exclusion, those consecrated to the religious life ought especially to have at heart the promotion of human dignity and the spirituality of the community”. There are some 800 nuns and 38 female congregations in Lithuania today and some 200 religious belonging to 14 congregations of consecrated life.
