Latin flare-up over letter to Castro PERTH, WA: March 2, 1989
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Number 2625
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Priest who spent 21 years in Soviet jails gives this tip... During his visit to Perth, Father Alfonsas Svarinskas has recent articles on Lithuania in The Record (February 16) pointed out to him by Father Alfonse Savickas of Highgate.
'Be wary'
Soviet communism so bankrupt money can't save it Russian concessions to human rights and religious freedom are only because that country needs Western technology and capital. That is the blunt assessment of a Lithuanian priest who over a period of 40 years has spent over 21 years in Soviet prisons and remote detention camps. Father Alfonsas Svarinskas is free to publicise this view of recent Soviet happenings only because he must now live as a permanent exile in Germany as a condition of his release last July. He also believes that Russian communism is so bankrupt that not even Western capitalism will be able to save it. He is suspicious even of the moves that have taken place in his native Lithuania such as the re-opening of Vilnius Cathedral earlier last month. Three churches have been re-opened but there are still 10 others that have not been handed back, he notes.
The Lithuanian church therefore is heading down a path but its destiny is not known, he points out. The Russians are making it clear that further concessions to the Church in Lithuania are dependent on the Vatican conceding that Lithuania is now part of the Soviet Union. But Father Svarinskas says that nothing but full liberation will ever satisfy his people, even if it takes three generations before the expatriate Lithuanians can go back to help rebuild their country. In the meantime their presence as expatriates keeps the Lithuanian flame flying before the world. Father Svarinskas was equally pessimistic about hopes for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in spite of recent public surfacing of that church in order to gain government recognition again.
He said that although there was much publicity over the release of 600 prisoners of conscience, there are still five million underground Catholics about whom nothing is seen or heard. He said that this was the shame of the Western Church that nobody had spoken up on their behalf. As with the Lithuanian situation, Father Svarinskas said that only through economic and technological pressure could the West put further demands on the Soviets for further rights. Alfonsas Svarinskas was only a high school graduate of 17 when in 1943 he got his first taste of Russian imprisonment and labour camps. But even there he became something of a leader, in his work as a medical orderly caring for the sick and as a source of information to everyone. Only after Stalin's death was he able to take a further step in the advertised
new freedom of religion and he was ordained priest in 1954 but still in the prison camp. By the time he was released from the camp two years later he faced the new hurdle of being accepted back both by the parishioners and by the government agents who watched him closely and had him moved to another parish before a second arrest and imprisonment, annoying his interrogators with the advice that it was now time for him (and them) to say their prayers. He was released a second time in 1964 but by 1983 he was back under a seven-year sentence again. The wrong question to ask this fighter for faith and fatherland is: What did you first do wrong? "I've never done anything wrong and my only regret is thatIhave never done more", he chuckled. The Russians said that he had spoken and agitated against the State and that can mean whatever they want it to say.