Pope in Lithuania: Tribute paid to victims of oppression

Hill of Crosses

In his "Angelus" message at the end of the Mass at Santakos Park in Kaunas on Sunday, Pope Francis explained that the ungodly, who claim to believe that "power is the norm of justice", dominate the weak and use their power to impose a way of thinking, an ideology, a prevailing mindset.

Recalling the 1943 destruction of the ghetto of Vilnius, that was the climax of two years of the killing of the Jews, the Holy Father lamented that in the ungodly, evil is always trying to destroy good. He urged Lithuanians to watch out against the resurgence of that
"pernicious attitude" of dominating others, saying any trace of it can taint the heart of generations that have not gone through those times. The Pope said, Jesus offers us an antidote against the temptation of the desire for primacy and domination over others, which can dwell in our heart or in the heart of any society or country. Jesus asks us "to be the last of all and the servant of all; to go to the place where no one else wants to go, where no one travels, the furthest peripheries; to serve and come to know the lowly and the rejected."

"We could allow the Gospel of Jesus Christ to reach the depths of our lives, then the 'globalisation of solidarity' would be a reality."

Recalling Lithuania's famous Hill of Crosses, where thousands have planted their crosses, the Pope asked the faithful to implore the Blessed Virgin to help them all plant their own crosses of service and commitment to the needs of others, on that hill where the poor dwell, where care and concern are needed for the outcast and for minorities. In this way, he said, "we can keep far from our lives and our cultures the possibility of destroying one another, of marginalising, of continuing to discard whatever we find troublesome or uncomfortable".

At the end, the Pope said that he would stop at the monument of the Vilnius Ghetto to pray on the 75th anniversary of its destruction. He invoked God's blessing on dialogue and common commitment for justice and peace.

Pope Francis concluded the first leg of his visit to Baltic nations and ended his time in Lithuania by paying tribute to the victims of the bloody repression perpetrated by the Soviet regime in Lithuania. The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights is housed in the former headquarters of the KGB: a stark reminder never to forget the mistakes and the atrocities of the past. The museum's bloody history began when this former gymnasium became the headquarters of the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania in 1941. It was then occupied by the Soviet Secret Police - the KGB - when the Nazis left in 1944. The KGB stayed until 1991 when Lithuania became independent from the Soviet Union.

The museum is divided into two parts - the upper two floors document the Lithuanian partisans' resistance against the Soviet occupiers, the deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia and day-to-day life in the Lithuanian Socialist Soviet Republic. The other parts of the museum are the prison cells, and execution and torture chambers in the basement.
The cells are exactly how the KGB officers left them upon leaving Lithuania in 1991.

The grounds are where the bodies of those tortured in Vilnius' interior prison by the forerunner of the KGB - the NKVD/MGB - were buried between 1944-1947. Amongst those who were interrogated and imprisoned here is Jesuit priest Sigitas Tamkevičius, an important figure in the Lithuanian resistance to Soviet occupation. Arrested in 1983, he served ten years in prison and in exile in Siberia before becoming the auxiliary bishop of Kaunas in 1991 and the archbishop of Kaunas in 1996. Alongside Archbishop Tamkevičius, Pope Francis said a prayer of remembrance and hope for the people of Lithuania.