“The love of God generates not violence but martyrs”, declared Cardinal Antonio M. Rouco Varela, archbishop of Madrid, in his homily on 16 September, broadcast by the Catholic channel COPE. He was referring to an exhibition on the religious phenomenon in the Cultural Centre “La Villa”, which has aroused a good deal of controversy. The exhibition, said Cardinal Rouco, “claims to demonstrate in a superficial manner” that “the phenomenon of religions and faith in God produces violence”. “Quite the contrary is true – he declared – and is a truth ascertained through the centuries, especially in the 20th century: the love of God, offered to man in total gratuitousness, produces martyrs”. According to Cardinal Rouco “current forms of religious fanaticism are to be cured not by denying the truth and love of God through the crypto-religious formulae of a radical and self-sufficient secularism, but by seeking and embodying it in the world in as authentic way as possible”.
