Archbishop: This is a 'Time of Martyrs'

"Given that we make up only one body, the wounds and death of other Christians touch us personally, as if we ourselves were martyred."

RIMINI, Italy (Zenit) - Mankind needs the Church because the Church has the answers to life's toughest questions, says the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, who is also rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, said this Friday at the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples held in Rimini.

The gathering, organized by the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, ended Saturday. The archbishop participated in the forum titled "Church and Modernity: The Necessary Dialogue."

"Modern man needs the Church precisely because he is a disoriented man: he doesn't know where he comes from or where he is going," said Archbishop Fisichella. "He continues to wonder about the reason for pain and death."

The university rector said the currents of thought in vogue today and the tendency to reduce all questions to matters of science and technology isn't providing the answers man needs.

The Church, on the other hand, is "an expert in humanity, and knows the great questions that are in man's heart," continued the prelate.

Archbishop Fisichella said the Church proposes "the question of truth, that is, of the meaning of life."
"There is no genuine liberty without truth or love," he added. He then made reference to Christ's crucifixion, where he said love "reached its summit."

Martyrs

"In the course of her 2000 years," the prelate continued, "the Church is still important in people's lives" and Christians are still "capable of being martyrs."

Archbishop Fisichella reaffirmed that sentiment in an interview this weekend with the Italian newspaper Libero.

Alluding to the events last week in the Indian state of Orissa, where Christians were on receiving end of numerous acts of violence after a Hindu leader was killed in the state's Kandhamal district, he said that the Church is often "the object of violence."

The prelate added that the Church is still living "the time of martyrs." "In a world that progresses and believes it has acquired the values of democracy and liberty, we witness unheard of instances of violence and intolerance," said the archbishop.

"We are living, perhaps, through the most critical phase of Western culture," continued Archbishop Fisichella, "in which there is a lack of profound respect for Christianity, which is the very root of Western civilization itself. It is as if a child repudiated his own mother."

"Given that we make up only one body, the wounds and death of other Christians touch us personally, as if we ourselves were martyred."