"A powerful and mature testimony of human and Christian values": this is what Benedict XVI asked to the Catholics of Lithuania in a letter addressed to mgr. Sigitas Tamkevièius, metropolitan archbishop of Kaunas, on the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Ecclesiastic Province in Lithuania. The letter recalls that on 4th April 1926, the then Pope Pius XI, "with the Apostolic Constitution Lituanorum gente, realised the old wish of the Lithuanian bishops and the congregation, who, in a spirit of deep communion with the Roman Pontiff, after the rebirth of their country at the end of the First World War, asked that they might have a full-fledged church organisation". Benedict Xvi added, "The painful ordeals the Lithuanian people had to go through during the last eight decades are well known. The Ecclesiastic Province, young in age but already rich and thriving with apostolic life, was hit hard by the harsh Soviet persecution, which was against the values of Catholic faith, deeply rooted in a large part of the population". "The years of the ordeal saw the thriving of a veritable breeding ground of witnesses and martyrs of the faith". So, "after the fall of the Communist dictatorship, the Lithuanian people took back their freedom and have fit in better and better with the family of the nations, contributing to them with their legacy of values". (to be continued)
