The Jesuit who survived the KGB

September 24, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Vilnius, Lithuania, Sep 24, 2018 / 10:40 am (CNA).- When Pope Francis visited a former KGB building in Vilnius, Lithuania Sept. 23, Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius was the only bishop to accompany him there. Now housing the Museum of the Occupation and Freedom Fighters, the site was once used for the detention and execution of thousands of Lithuanians. Tamkevicius had personal experience as a prisoner there.

The building, a former gymnasium, served as a headquarters for the Gestapo during World War II. Following the Nazi retreat in 1944, the KGB moved in. More than 2,000 people were executed there, and 300 hundred priests were held prisoner – including Tamkevicius.

“In 8 months I was interrogated 60 times – every other day,” he said.

“The pope wanted to come and visit the roots of our pain,” the archbishop told CNA following the visit.

Born in 1938, Tamkevicius vividly remembers the Soviet occupation, and he told CNA about the campaign of religious repression Lithuanians faced under the communist regime.

“The Soviets wanted to destroy Lithuania and suppress religious freedom – that was non existent. They arrested more than 300 priests, who were not even allowed to teach. They wanted to minimize the Church. It was then that we started to think what we could do to resist the Soviets.”

Tamkevicius played an active part in resisting communist persecution of the Church in Lithuania. With four other priests, he founded in 1978 the Catholic Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights.

He also set up the Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania, a small magazine – produced on a typewriter – that reported on the situation of the Church and of Catholics in the Baltic state. Tamkevicius edited the Chronicle for 11 years.

Asked about why he felt called to play such a prominent role during a period of active persecution for the Church, Tamkevicius told CNA, “I entered the Church, and I entered it completely.”

As a Jesuit priest, Tamkevicius began his work of resistance by writing a news bulletin to inform the world about the persecution faced by the Church in Lithuania. As one of the younger members of the order, he felt called to take on an active role.

“I was one of the youngest,” he said, “so I made the decision that I could risk something for the Church.” Tamkevicius founded the Chronicle in 1972.

“Every issue of the Chronicle of the Church in Lithuania carried stories about what was happening here. When I started, I had no idea how many KGB collaborators were all around us. It was only thanks to God I could continue to write the Chronicles for 11 years.”

“In that place Pope Francis visited,” he said, “thousands have been killed, while thousands more were sent to into exile in the Soviet Union.” The archbishop was among them.

In 1983, Tamkevicius was arrested and held by the KGB. He was sentenced to 10 years of forced labor and exile. He served some of his sentence in Siberia.

Tamkevicius told CNA that Francis’ visit was an emotional moment for him.

“I dreamed for 35 years that the pope would one day visit the place where I and others were imprisoned, and so I thanked the pope for showing solidarity with our people.”

The pope’s speech was less important to the archbishop than the fact that he was there. He told  CNA that Francis “said nothing in particular, he showed solidarity.” He added that entering the museum building brought back memories, “good and bad.”

Among the good things, he said, was his recollection of “the prayers, never more intense – the Rosary, the reading of the Bible.”  These devotions sustained him during a period in which he was held and questioned by the Soviets.

Tamkevicius was eventually released as part of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestrojka program. He returned home and was appointed spiritual director of the seminary in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city, in 1989, becoming the rector of the seminary the following year.

In 1991, he was consecrated an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Kaunas, becoming the city’s archbishop in 1996.

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This pregnant woman found her faith in 1930s Spain – and died for it.

March 30, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Madrid, Spain, Mar 30, 2017 / 05:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A pregnant woman who found her faith in a Spanish prison, refused to give up the name of her Christian catechist to her persecutors, and died for lack of medical care was beatified on Saturday.

“Emilia is a martyr of suffering, because she died some 10 days after giving birth for lack of medical attention, clutching her rosary. She had a chance to apostatize, to betray the one who taught her the faith, but she did not. She’s an example,” Historian Martin Ibarra told CNA.  

On March 25, Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect for the Causes of Saints, beatified Emilia Fernandez and 114 other martyrs of religious persecution during the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936-1939.

Emilia became the first Romani – or Gypsy – woman to be beatified by the Catholic Church.

“Emilia’s life up to 24 years of age was normal for an Andalusian Gypsy woman at the beginning of the century,” Ibarra said. “She devoted herself to her family, her work as a basket maker. She was a hard working woman, a Gypsy and honest.”

She and her husband, Juan Cortes and were imprisoned for trying to prevent Juan from being conscripted into the war.

Although Emilia was pregnant when she went to prison, she did not receive any additional care. Officials assigned her the same insufficient food ration as the rest of the female prisoners.

Emilia “carried her pregnancy in the prison under terrible conditions, and suffered a lot from hunger,” Ibarra said.

It was in prison where she discovered her faith.

“Even though she had been baptized, she never set foot in a church. It was especially through the rosary that her catechist Dolores del Olmo taught her,” Ibarra recounted.

“Every afternoon the female prisoners prayed, even though it was forbidden. Emilia wanted to know more about her faith and she asked Dolores del Olmo to explain it to her. There she realized that she belonged to the Church, and she learned the ‘Our Father,’ the ‘Hail Mary’ and the ‘Glory Be’.”

The warden for the women’s prison, Dolores Salmerón, knew that Emilia and the other prisoners were praying. She offered the woman more food and offered to release her and her husband on one condition: she must reveal the name of whoever taught her to pray.

Emilia refused to betray her catechist and so she was punished with solitary confinement.

A few months later, Emilia gave birth. “Between the cries and sobs, her catechist was saying prayers which Emilia repeated, although she could not continue because of the pain,” Ibarra added.

Dolores del Olmo, her catechist, baptized Emilia’s newborn daughter with the name Angeles. The new mother died 10 days later.

Ibarra is the author of the book “Emilia, the Basket Maker, Martyr of the Rosary,” which tells of her life and death. He said that Emilia’s devotion to the rosary led her to love Jesus Christ more.

“She fulfilled her maternity, risking her life and in fact she died for lack of medical attention,” the historian said. “She died from her sufferings, for being faithful to her faith, for bringing a life into the world and did not give in to her jailer’s desire that she apostatize.”

For Ibarra, Emilia’s beatification shows the vitality of the Church.

“She is a call to hope and responsibility, who teaches us with her life that God is at our side, even in difficulties,” he said. “Emilia went to prison hardly knowing the faith and when she died, she did so as a friend of God. That is beautiful.”

She was beatified in a group of martyrs from Almeria, Spain. They include cathedral dean Father Jose Alvarez-Benavides y de la Torre and 114 companion martyrs: 95 priests, 20 laymen and two women, including Emilia.

Emilia is the first Romani woman to be beatified. The first male Gypsy blessed, Ceferino Giménez Malla, known as El Pelé, was beatified by Saint John Paul II in 1997. He died in the religious persecution of the Spanish Civil War for protecting a priest. Before his persecutors shot him, he held a rosary in his hand and cried out “Long live Christ the King!”

Iberra characterized both Emelia and Ceferino as “martyrs of the rosary” because both of them refused to stop praying it.

“This demonstrates that the Virgin leads us to God. For those two martyrs, she was the Gate of Heaven,” he said.

 

 

 

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