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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Broken Cross

Madman bursts into a Catholic church, breaks a cross on altar. The pastor sees it as an apocalyptic sign
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This arrived just now in my e-mail box from a Catholic priest friend. I publish it with his permission. I have edited it slightly to protect his identity, and the location of the church:

I know you are so busy these days, but I must write you about what happened to me today.

Just before noon I was sitting with a friend at the rectory, talking about iconography, when a stranger entered without knocking and shouted: “Come with me, Father! Come!” I followed him. He took me just next door to the entrance of our church, which is closed on weekdays, but you can look in through a glass door. I saw another stranger destroying that glass and trying to get in. I told him to stop, but he ignored me. At that moment I called the police. The police station is just around the corner.

When I turned back to the perpetrator, he was at the side door trying to get out. He used the lower part of a processional cross as the instrument. The cross itself lay broken in half on the altar table.

The man didn’t steal anything. And when the police came he was unable to state any reason why he did what he did. He seemed confused – almost as if he couldn’t understand why they arrested him.

He was probably a madman, and I am almost sure he had no intention to say anything deeper with that gesture. Nevertheless, there was something prophetic about it.

It happened exactly at noon on the feast day of the beheading of St. John the Baptist – the protector of the indissolubility of marriage and patron saint of those who are speaking truth to power.

A broken cross in the church – or in the Church? – what a symbol these days!

Several days after Vigano’s testimony, when the initial hopes seemed to be marred by the mainstream media coverage of the event, this all seems so apocalyptic.

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