"When you find yourself in extreme circumstances, it is very hard to share your faith with your jailers", declared Ingrid Betancourt to "La Croix" referring to her six-year captivity in the hands of the FARC. "The only answer to violence is love", Betancourt explained in an interview she gave to the French Catholic daily, in yesterday’s edition, on Friday July, 10. "This non-violent attitude she added was Christian to me because I am a Catholic, but it might easily have been Buddhist or Muslim". It is not easy to forgive, "but the road to forgiveness can be found and I found it in Christ", she added. "Sometimes I saw a cruel and loathsome jailer coming towards me, he would stand in front of me and I was able to smile at him". "I had to walk the path of forgiveness", and in the end "I was able to forgive not only my jailers, but also my fellow captives and the friends who had forgotten me" and even those who "with their words, make you think that life is just a number". In those painful circumstances, Ingrid Betancourt became very close to the Virgin Mary whom she is giving thanks to with a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
