The highlight of the consistory for new cardinals on October 5 will be the bestowal of the red hat on Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevičius, emeritus of Kaunas, in Lithuania, and emeritus of the Siberian gulag. I recently met a young priest of Kaunas who is an heir to that witness, by blood and chrism, family and ordination. But I will come to that later …
Cardinal Tamkevičius will join that great procession of cardinals from behind the Iron Curtain who proved worthy witnesses in the one of great persecutions of the Church in history. English Catholics boast about St John Fisher, who alone among their bishops stood fast under Henry VIII. Catholics in the former Soviet empire have a vast parade of St John Fishers. Fidelity was the norm, even at great cost.
