Dear Friends,
I do not often recommend movies in this space, but I saw a movie this past week that I would recommend to those of you who want to see movie that presents a vivid portrayal of faith and goodness in the midst of the evil of the world and will be showing at Film Streams for the next week. The movie is based on actual events that occurred in Poland during and immediately after World War II. A group of Polish Benedictine nuns were raped by soldiers during the war and now a few of them are pregnant. They turn to a French Red Cross doctor to help them and ask her to keep the whole thing a secret. The movie is done in French and Polish with English subtitles. The acting is excellent and the story will stay with you for a long time.
Pope Francis is visiting Poland this week for the gathering of World Youth Day. While there he visited Auschwitz which is known as the world’s preeminent monument to evil, a physical reminder of the stunning depravity of which human beings are capable. You may have seen photos of Pope Francis sitting on a bench in the camp, by himself, in silence and prayer. He sat there for a long stretch of time; meditating on what his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI called “this place of horror.”
The paradox of Auschwitz is that alongside the lessons it has to teach about evil, there are also chapters of goodness – stories of courage, and sacrifice, and the kind of self-giving love that becomes most visible, and dramatic, only in moments of terrifying hate. This is what is witnessed in the movie Innocents.
The best-known example of that paradox in Catholic circles is St. Maximillian Kolbe, the Franciscan priest who volunteered to die in place of a stranger at Auschwitz and was starved to death with nine other inmates in the summer of 1941. He was declared a saint and martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1982. Pope Francis on Friday visited the cell where he died. Pope Francis did not say a word during his entire time at the death camp.
During his visit, Francis offered the world another powerful lesson in “man’s humanity to man” by meeting twenty-five “Righteous Among the Nations”. The title “Righteous Among the Nations” has been awarded since 1963 by a commission of the Supreme Court of Israel to recognize non-Jews who took substantial risks during the Holocaust to save Jewish lives. To date, more than 26,000 men and women from 51 countries have received the honor. You may recall the movie Schindler’s List which portrayed one of the Righteous and his action to care for others.
Rabbi Shudrich of New York arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and the Righteous. The Rabbi noted that a U.S. group, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, offers the Righteous some financial help. “But, I wanted to come up with a spiritual gift and I thought that a special blessing from the pope would make them feel honored because of their unbelievable morality and humanity,” he said.
Francis met with them one by one and presented each one with a gift in a small red box. Schudrich said he was grateful that the pope met with the Righteous and also valued his silent homage to the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau, most of whom were Jewish. Afterward, when he met Francis briefly, he said he told him: “Thank you for your prayer of silence.”
Later Pope Francis spoke with a group of young people and reflected on the experience at Auschwitz. “How much pain! How much cruelty! Is it possible that we humans created in God’s image are capable of doing these things?” he said. And, later he added, “I do not want to make you bitter, but I have to say the truth. Cruelty did not end in Auschwitz, in Birkenau. Even today people are being tortured. Today in many parts of the world where there is war, the same thing is happening.”
Let us join Pope Francis in praying and working to end the violence that human beings do to one another. Let us build a world of peace.
Peace,
Fr. Damian