predication.net

The Soviet Union, ruled by communists from Moscow, whose collapse Putin describes as the greatest disaster of the 20th century, expanded its territory by forcibly occupying other states, whose territory it then Russified. Especially when Stalin and Hitler divided Europe and then Moscow occupied the Baltic States. The USSR collapsed in 1991, due to its economic incompetence caused by the communists. After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine renounced nuclear weapons, and Russia in 1994 committed to guaranteeing its freedom, independence and territorial integrity. (Budapest Memorandum)

In 2013-14, mass protests began in Ukraine after President Yanukovych rejected the association process with the European Union. The topic of grand corruption was also added. After weeks of protests, the parliament removed him from office. (similar change to our November 1989) In November 2016, Yanukovych admitted that he wrote a letter to Putin with a request to send Russian troops to Ukraine.   Then in 2014 Russia forcibly occupied Crimea and Donbas, effectively starting the current war. (around 1900, 53% of Ukrainians and 28% of Russians lived in Donbass. More here: Hitler and Stalin tormentedDonbascoulhad   ) )

Putin got away with it because the sanctions were weak, they were not enforced, and the West still naively believed that good relations with Russia would be achieved through mutually beneficial trade. Putin evaluated it in such a way that he could afford to occupy Ukraine militarily, install a pro-Russian non-democratic government in Kyiv like in Belarus, and tear off another territory. On February 24, 2022, he ordered the attack. He miscalculated, because the Ukrainians began to successfully defend themselves, and the free West also began to support them militarily. The biggest war in Europe since the end of World War II began.

Destroyed lives and families

The greatest tragedy is the destroyed human lives. According to qualified estimates from September 2023, Russian military losses are approaching 300,000. This includes 120,000 dead and 170,000 to 180,000 wounded soldiers. Ukrainian losses are estimated at nearly 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Since then, the death toll has risen. According to a January 2024 estimate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, including 587 children. On the 2nd anniversary, President Zelenskyi said that Ukraine has 31,000 soldiers killed, and the media identified more than 45,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, with the fact that the actual number may be twice as high. Putin and his Verchuška caused the biggest slaughter of Slavs after Hitler.

For a long time, Russia has had many more abortions, murders, and suicides than the EU. Putin’s propagandist, political scientist Rostislav Išenko, on the state TV Russia Today about the Ukrainian victims of the war: “We count it dry. 100,000. 300,000, half a million. I don’t feel any sadness about it, quite the contrary. The more we kill, the closer the end of the war is.” Russland verstärk Angriffe auf Ukraine: Entrüstung nach Propaganda-Aussage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeaiMDcUNaU&t=10s    •  Russia’s average offensive war losses in February 2024 were 983 people a day – Those sent to death by Putin to murder Ukrainians and steal their freedom and territory.

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archbishop Šefchuk says how Russian aggression destroys families. “The Russians kidnapped 20,000 children from Ukraine… We also have 35,000 missing soldiers.” He quotes a devastated woman: “Am I a widow? Should I pray for my husband as a living person or as a dead person?” … “Today most families are divided because men are in the army and women with children have left the city or even the country.” There are 4.5 million refugees in Europe alone, others are displaced in Ukraine. “The worst months of my life” – children taken from Ukraine testify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeJyXRtmbh0

Persecution of the Church.

The Russians also destroyed more than 600 temples and church buildings, and abolished religious freedom. (Statement of the Chairman of the IRFBA on 2 years of Russian aggression against Ukraine accompanied by abuse, killing of priests and destruction of places of worship here: https://www.state.gov/irfba-chairs-statement-on-the-somber-anniversary-of-two -years-since-the-Russian-aggression-against-ukraine-accompanied-by-severe-violations-and-abuses-killing-of-priests-and-destruction-of-p/  )

In the occupied territories, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was pushed underground, Senior Archbishop Shevchuk explained. “There are no more Catholic priests in this part of Ukraine. We received information that our people in Donetsk went to pray in the church every Sunday even without a priest, but the church was confiscated and the doors were closed. In the occupied territories around Zaporizhzhia, the Russian authorities issued a special decree banning the existence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and confiscating our property. That’s why people pray in their homes, and if they can, they participate in our services via the Internet.”

The danger faced by Catholics in occupied Ukraine is also reminded by the ongoing imprisonment of fathers Ivan Levický and Bohdan Heleta, who were arrested in November 2022. “Are they alive or dead? We have not received any news since their arrest.” ( https://acnslovensko.sk/novinky/ukrajinsky-arcibiskup-svjatoslav-sevcuk-vojna-zasiahla-srdce-nasej-spolocnosti-rodinu ) …     Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Stepan Podolčak was killed in the Russian-occupied village of Kalančak in the Kherson region.   “They dragged Jaroslavovič out of the house barefoot, with a bag on his head. Later they came and took his wife to identify him as well,”. (hromadske.ua). I wrote about how a Slovak priest was kidnapped a year ago here: Russian bombing of the Kharkiv region killed four people, including a priest. He died in the ruins of the church. A six-year-old girl and her grandfather were killed in the village of Veliki Burluk near Kupinask.

Kremlin against Ukraine.

The Russians occupied 42,000 km2 of Ukrainian territory until the invasion on February 24, 2022. Then another 119,000 km2, which is a total of 27% of Ukraine. In 2022, the Ukrainians regained 74,500 km2, leaving over 14% of the territory of Ukraine under Russian control. (Note – Hitler and the Hungarians took away 20% of Slovakia’s territory through the Vienna Arbitration) The Russians devastated an even larger territory so  almost 500 billion euros are needed to restore Ukraine. It is informed by a joint report of the Ukrainian government, the World Bank and the United Nations. Housing, transport, trade, and industry are the most affected. (For comparison – according to the budget for 2024, revenues of the Slovak Republic should be €53.48 billion and expenses €61.32 billion.) The two-year war has so far cost Ukraine more than $19.6 billion in tourism revenue alone… .

Under Stalin, Moscow caused a famine in Ukraine that killed 3-6 million people. Now, Russia was planning in advance how, after the invasion of Ukraine, it would steal Ukrainian grain on a large scale. For months, Moscow planned not only military operations, but also how it would steal twelve thousand tons of grain worth a billion dollars a year. This did not work out for the Russians, but Ukrainian grain producers will have a loss of 3.2 billion USD.

As a result of Russian attacks on Lviv, Ukraine, a Catholic charity warehouse burned down in September 2023.   It contained 300 tons of humanitarian aid, including generators. Shortly before, a transport with 33 pallets of aid for 660 Ukrainian families arrived at the warehouse. (Caritas. pl)

The Russian government most harms Russians.

Little is said about the price the Russians are paying for the war. Since the end of World War II, no one has harmed the Russians as much as their own government. In the material, social, cultural, and moral areas.  Now I will list only part of the material costs and losses from the ongoing war: The average monthly salary in Russia (2023) is €712. (Slovakia €1,373, Austria, where the communists never ruled, €2,850.) Almost half of the people in Russia do not have enough wages to cover basic expenses.

The Russian labor market lacked almost 5 million people a year. Also because 300,000 people died or were injured in the war, and also because 4 million Russians left Russia in the first three months of 2022 there are about 600,000 Russian soldiers in the fighting zone in Ukraine. Puten claimsGood video here: Eiseskälte in Russland: Verzweifelte Russen appellieren an Wladimir Putin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfMpTg3ElSE  …..  We live like in besieged Leningrad, the Russians claim. They have been without heating for several days 

According to experts, repairing the entire network of public services would cost roughly three trillion rubles. For comparison, last year the Kremlin spent over 13 trillion rubles on war, which is 42% of all federal budget expenditures. Fixing Russia’s entire public service system would cost roughly a quarter of a year’s worth of military spending. Communist billionaire Putin, who built himself a luxury residence for a billion dollars, prefers to spend it on murdering Ukrainians.

The poor in Russia and the world.

10 years after “liberation”, up to 80% of families in Crimea have difficulty buying even the most basic food. (= about 159,000 people) “Pensioners simply cannot make ends meet,…they sell their flimsy possessions on the market, rummage through garbage, ask their children and grandchildren for help,” describes Basilian Makarij Leniv. For 3,500 families per year, this is approximately the price of one of the more than 3,000 tanks that the Russians lost in Ukraine.

Russia spent approximately 560 million euros only on   airstrikes on January 2, 2024. That is the annual income of 65,000 Russians, intended for killing and destroying Ukraine. On other days it is “only” a tenth or a third of this amount. In November 2023 – 374 Iranian kamikaze drones, in September 500, in October and July around 250. The Shahed drone costs about 50 thousand dollars. Plus artillery shelling and other missiles, including several times more expensive.

Recently, the Russians lost two special A-50 aircraft, each worth 330 million USD. (For comparison – ACN finances the construction and year-round operation of a canteen for 17,000 euros, providing 6 meals a week for 100 elderly people in the suburbs of Aleppo in Syria.

Causes – the Pope and the facts.

Pope Francis mentioned several causes of the war. When he said that one of the reasons might be “NATO barking at the gates of Russia”, Russian propaganda and its supporters spread it as proof that “even the Pope said that the cause of the war is NATO policy.” The Russians, like Stalin and Brezhnev, claim that they started the war because the West threatened them. Even now, it is equally deceptive propaganda, because the West bought everything it needed from Russia, which is much more effective than acquiring it through war. This is also proven by the fact that the USA and NATO have significantly reduced their spending on armaments since the end of the Cold War. They started increasing them only after the beginning of the Russian invasion.

“No one threatens us, no one attacks us,” reads the appeal, which was signed by more than 2,000 Russian scientists, artists and human rights activists at the beginning of February 2022. They asked the Kremlin to avoid an “immoral, irresponsible and criminal” war against Ukraine.   Russian intellectuals call on the Kremlin to avoid war against Ukraine.   Russian General Leonid Ivashov spoke out against Russia’s war with Ukraine and accused President Putin of trying to provoke this war to stay in power. In addition, the cause is Russian national imperialism , which is proclaimed by Putin and his entourage and ideologues. This also includes Putin’s mourning for the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was ruled by the Kremlin as a totalitarian.

There is no treaty where the West undertakes not to expand NATO, but there is a treaty where Russia guarantees the freedom, territorial integrity, and independence of Ukraine. (Budapest Memorandum) Post-communist and post-Soviet states applied for NATO membership on the basis of bad experiences with communist Russia, and Putin has now proved that their fears were justified.

However, the Pope has been calling almost every week for two years to support Ukraine, which is suffering from brutal, fratricidal, and sacrilegious aggression. In his speeches dedicated to this war, he cited John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris several times . from the time of the Cold War, which says that the main cause of wars, enormous suffering, and a lot of refugees are governments that take away the freedom of their own citizens and other nations. Francis identified the “despotic and imperialist visions” of the aggressor as the cause.

In his New Year’s address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, Pope Francis   said, among other things: “Unfortunately, after almost two years of a large-scale war waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the much-desired peace has still not been able to take root in minds and hearts, despite the large number of victims and enormous destruction.” We need to “end the current tragedy through negotiations by international law.” (= including internationally recognized borders) I did not see a single word about this in the Slovak Christian-conservative media either. In Russia, for such words, he would end up in prison or fall out of the window.

Peace according to Putin’s Russia

Deluded pro-Russian peacemakers repeat that the Pope is also calling for peace, but they keep silent and that Francis is mostly asking for a “just peace”. Also the fact that the Church has long taught that true peace comes from justice. Also what Putin says about peace, he and his colleagues have said more than once that, there will be peace in Ukraine when Russia achieves its goals. Putin named those goals two years ago: to eliminate everyone who considers himself Ukrainian, to cut off from Ukraine the territory he is interested in, and to install a government obedient to the Kremlin in Kiev.

Weapons for Ukraine.

Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has criticized armaments and says that conflicts must be resolved through negotiation. When he repeated it after the first months of the Russian invasion, several “peacemakers” began to use it as an argument against supplying arms to Ukraine. However, they never addressed the challenge to the Russians, who started the war. However, the Pope praised the Ukrainians more than once for heroically defending their homeland and freedom. Both František and his close associates have said more than once that Ukraine must defend itself, and for that it also needs weapons. The use of weapons is morally permissible in defense.

The Munich Dictator, when Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the naive belief that this would save the peace, showed how such a policy would turn out. The war came, there were more victims, and it ended only with the military defeat of Nazi Germany. In December 1943, Stalin also said that the Soviets would not have won without the enormous military and material aid of the USA and Great Britain. Among other things, they delivered: 21,478 aircraft, 12,041 tanks, 9,600 guns, 431,236 trucks, 13,000 jeeps, 1,117,000,000 ammunition, 1,860 locomotives, 2,670,000 t of gasoline, 212,000 t of aluminum . Almost 4.5 million tons of high-calorie foods from the USA alone, another from Britain.

For similar reasons, the democratic West supports Ukraine today. The US has approved more than $110 billion for Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022. The EU and its member states provided Ukraine with more than EUR 82 billion in those 2 years, of which EUR 27 billion was in the form of military support.  Today, other weapons are also effective, but it is still only a fraction of what the Soviets received for World War II. If Ukraine had received some weapons more and earlier, today the Russians could have been pushed out of 90% of the Ukrainian territory, there could be fewer dead, and peace could be negotiated.

Putin’s ministers.

Patriarch Kirill was also criticized by Orthodox representatives of several countries for his support of Putin’s war. Pope Francis told him that he shouldn’t be Putin’s minister. This is done by everyone who justifies Russian aggression, relativizes its guilt, and spreads Russian propaganda. Anyone who refuses to provide arms to Ukraine in defense of its freedom is effectively helping Putin achieve his goals. It gets worse the more power and influence he has. If a politician does this in the center of the EU and at home, and at the same time agrees to the sale of weapons, he is a reckless Pharisee without morals and a sense of justice. He is the head of the Slovak government by the will of the people. And Slovakia is one of the two countries in Europe that are the worst in this regard.

“It was a huge shock for me, I was 21 years old and I just cried there. Although it was a mass event, there was silence and peace. And suddenly I knew that God is there with me and that he is much bigger than I am,” blogger and programmer Juraj Macko, who has been living in Olomouc for years.

We talked about what converts faced in the church, how he coped with his failures, and why his first encounter with God was crucial for him. 

What kind of family did you grow up in?

Basically in atheistic. Although the father was baptized as a child and his parents were also Catholic, the mother comes from a completely non-practicing family. My parents were already atheists and faith was not discussed at all at home.

Now and then, when I went to my grandmother’s village, I saw a nativity scene at her place for Christmas and mud balls or crosses in the cemetery for Easter, but I didn’t attach any importance to that.

Didn’t your grandparents try to attract you to the faith?

No, I wasn’t under any pressure in this regard, they probably respected my parents’ upbringing. I only saw that Grandma went to church, and I asked her a few times about Christianity, but that was all.

In primary school, I was a very self-confident child, because for seven years I performed in the program Zlatá brána, which was known throughout Czechoslovakia, although it was broadcast from Košice. People recognized me on the street because the children who performed in it were celebrities of the time. Plus I was doing well in school, I was good at science, I had straight units, and I was winning Math Olympiads. Basically, I was a successful kid, for whom everything seemed to go well. But I was missing something, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

So you didn’t know more about Christianity then, even from a cultural point of view? Not. Grandmother took me to church about twice as a boy, but I didn’t understand anything, it didn’t leave any impression on me.

I knew next to nothing about God until high school when communism fell and deregulation took place.

After the revolution, I was a freshman in high school, and in the housing estate in Košice where I lived, people suddenly started going to church en masse, and I discovered that many of my classmates were Christians.

It was my first intellectual breakthrough because I was interested in why my classmates go to church. I went to church on Sunday just to see what was going on there. I’ve been there about four times, but it didn’t appeal to me.

I was just intellectually curious, and I was equally interested in the various esoteric currents that sprang up after the revolution. I went through high school completely fine, nothing bothered me.

Some atheists need to cope with Christianity in their own way and either make a mockery of believers or are militantly angry at the church. Did you have these tendencies?

I had a positive attitude towards Christianity and even a certain respect, I did not need to mock it. But otherwise I didn’t care. I never categorized people according to faith, it was in a box for me, like when someone had a white t-shirt or a blue briefcase, being religious was one of the characteristics of a person.

However, you experienced a turning point in college. What has happened?

I was twenty years old when I finished my first year of college. At that time I was going through my first crisis, I was studying economics and it stopped making sense to me. 

In the second year, I helped high school students with a cultural event and later I learned that they are religious Christians. They asked me what I was doing on New Year’s Eve, that they were going to a Christian meeting in Paris. Since I didn’t have a program and the whole thing was very cheap, I signed up as a tourist as well.

It was a meeting of the Taizé movement and we stayed in families. Our family didn’t speak English well and they kept asking us how we liked the meeting. However, we did not participate in anything, we simply walked around the city and got to know Paris. When we felt stupid in front of them, we still went to one mass for the Slovak participants of this meeting in the center of Paris, so that we could at least tell them that we participated.

It was a huge church that was smashed by young people.

At this mass, which I happened to be attending, I experienced a key spiritual moment that changed my entire life.

The choir sang the song My Wisdom, in which the words “Don’t be afraid, Jesus is here” are sung during the chorus. Don’t be afraid, because our Lord is here…” Suddenly, at one point, I felt that God was there, I felt him there.

It was a huge shock for me, I was 21 years old and I just cried there. Although it was a mass event, there was silence and peace. And suddenly I knew that God was there with me and that He was much bigger than I was.

Suddenly I didn’t have to deal with whether he existed or not, he was just there and he was so real that there was no doubt.

It was a real meeting like ours now when I know that I am indisputably talking to you.

I am no longer a believer in the sense that I believe that God exists. I know he is because I felt his presence. It is already something obvious to me. I can’t explain it any other way. It is certainly the strongest experience of my life.

Did you feel the need to tell someone immediately after that mass?

No, I didn’t know what to do with it. It is possible that no one there even noticed. Only after returning home did I gradually tell someone, because I still perceive what I experienced as a mystical experience.

God reveals himself in different ways, I don’t know why he chose such an emotional way at one moment just for me, who is more of an intellectual thinking person. But I don’t even think that if someone has a completely different path to God, then it is something less. I don’t evaluate it in any way, I take it as a fact that I got to know God in this way.

What were your next steps?

I decided to be baptized and somehow naturally I ended up with the Catholics. I studied in Bratislava, so I went to the Jesuits. An old priest was sitting on the gatehouse, darning his socks. He asked me what I needed. When I told him that I wanted to be baptized, he rolled his eyes at me and was surprised. He sent me to prepare for baptism, which lasted half a year at that time.

How did your family react?

They took note without much drama. I was baptized in Košice during the youth mass. And as an adult, I also received the sacrament of Holy Communion and Confirmation. The godparents were two high school classmates whom I knew to be religious. 

I started going to mass regularly and gradually got to know the principles of Christianity. Before, I really thought that the Holy Trinity was Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, I knew almost nothing, so I learned theology completely from the basics.

Meeting God is one thing, but have you had to deal with some things that didn’t sit right with you while studying Christianity?

I had no problem with anything at all since the experience of the meeting was so strong, I accepted everything, the catechism and all the truths of the faith. At that time I was very vulnerable, it was like a period of falling in love, and I did not perceive anything critically.

How long did such an intense, even emotional relationship with God last?

About two years. It is also described by other converts that the first months are really like when you are in love. In this period, therefore, the church stipulates that converts should not enter a religious order or a seminary, so that it is not a decision made in the initial euphoria. For the first “wow effect” to subside, let faith mature. 

You didn’t have a problem with the category of sin, since you didn’t have to deal with anything like that until then?

Well, I had to admit that I too am a sinner. As a convert, I rather had the idea that I would suddenly be perfect and would not commit sins anymore. Of course, I ran into it and dealt with it for a long time. A person who converts and gives everything to God desires to be perfect and it is very difficult to admit that he is still sinful. 

I had no problem with confession until I understood that I would be sinful all my life and many of my sins would be repeated until death. Coping with it was difficult, especially for the male ego.

When you compare yourself to people who received their faith from their parents, what do you see as the differences and possibly the biggest risks for converts?

The advantage of converts is that they had a very intense experience in adulthood that led them to faith, and they can return to it. The disadvantage is that they do not have a built-in background, because it is very difficult to build up all the habits that those baptized in childhood already have in them. It costs us a lot of energy and study. Just to accept the entire terminology and theology, that’s a study for a few years. The risk of a convert is also the initial enthusiasm, when he feels that he will convert the whole world and be holy, but after some time disappointment can come.

On the other hand, the risk of people being baptized in childhood is that they already take everything automatically and too habitually. Therefore, every person should experience conversion in order to realize the true depth of what he believes, to search for the true meaning of his faith, and to find a personal relationship with God.

I noticed this in the example of the Eucharist. Most people who go to church don’t even think about what happens at the altar. We believe that there is a God in the wafer, but somehow we are not really aware of it.

If we realize every time that God is really present in that little wafer, that is wonderful information. It’s either nonsense, or it’s true, and then I have to look at mass, adoration, or communion in a completely different way. This is so strong in the Catholic faith that when one accepts the essence of these things one experiences great depth.

Sometimes I perceive that we converts can help believers realize what treasures the church brings. If I recognize that I repeatedly meet the living God at mass, that is the fundamental reason why I go there. After that, I don’t care if the pastor is a jerk or if the child next to me is disturbing me. When one realizes that a miracle happens every day at Mass, it is wonderful. We converts can have the advantage that we had to go to the root of the matter and realize it all in depth. But I don’t want to generalize.

After a period of euphoria from faith, did you have a period of crisis?

Reality came when God no longer spoke so intensely. But there were also downfalls. The biggest one is probably that ten years ago my marriage broke up and was declared invalid. I knew I wouldn’t be euphoric all my life, but I didn’t expect this.

The convert may stumble, but it is necessary to remember those first moments with God and return to them. 

Did the breakup of your marriage shake your faith in God?

In those moments, I didn’t question the existence of God, but I asked what the point of it all was. I learned to trust him even in different life situations. Even when I was going through the hardest times, I never had a dark period where I didn’t feel anything at all.

Didn’t you have a problem with the way the Catholics defined their morals or teachings on marriage?

On the contrary, over time I understood the depth of every single legality in the church and what logic it hides. We think that our questions and doubts are genius and original, but the church has been solving them for more than two thousand years. And every time I have a doubt, I start studying and discovering America, and when I come across justifications, it’s an intellectual blessing for me, how the teachings of the church give logic.

I had the same impression from the church court where our marriage was judged. When I saw how honestly it was handled and how the truth was sought, it all confirmed the marriage teachings.

Although I was put down and I was mentally and physically at the bottom, the impression of the process left me in awe of how seriously it is taken and that the definition of marriage makes a lot of sense. Plus I experienced great sensitivity, although very painful things were also opening. However, out of respect, I cannot go into details. In the case of our marriage, it was declared invalid from the beginning.

I was going through a huge personal crisis, I expected everyone to judge me. I judged myself much more harshly, for a long time I could not come to terms with the direction my life was going. I was worried about how they would treat me now that I was divorced, but I didn’t experience any condemnation. I received help and encouragement from the church.

Has the aforementioned emotional relationship with God changed?I keep going back to the first meeting with him. But later, as an intellectual, I was glad to come across the works of Chesterton or CS Lewis, in which faith is also logically based, as well as in the works of Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustina. Even in the most difficult period, I did not come across a contradiction with what I believed in at the beginning. I also experienced intellectual astonishment at how consistent and logically arranged the teachings of the faith are.

When you joined the church in the 1990s, it was still strong and had great social influence. Currently, it is marked by many scandals and, especially in the Western world, by a massive outflow of believers, we also observe a low number of vocations in our country. Is it more difficult for people today to decide on baptism as an adult?

Even today, people have to ask themselves what the essence is honestly. The most essential is the relationship between me and God, but that is not all. The Church is not just priests, religious, and some organizational structure. They are all the saints in the history of the church and Jesus Christ, who is the head, so when we realize the meaning and depth with which this structure is built, we remain in awe.

I am not naive, I see all the mistakes of the church and I often hear how such and such priests have failed, you are such and such, but I always ask myself what I am, and who I am within the church. First of all, I am an adult and I take responsibility for my relationship with God and how I develop it, regardless of whether I like how this or that priest acts.

And then sin is the basic teaching of Christianity because Jesus died for us precisely because we are sinners. We are not better than other people. Being sinful is my basic premise. Therefore, I will not derive my participation in the church from whether others are sinners. I count on that in advance, because we are all sinners. Without it, we wouldn’t need Easter. And what we cannot manage with our strength, the Holy Spirit can complete.

Almost thirty years ago, you experienced the moment when you believed in Jesus as your God. How long is today for you?

I am aware of my sin and for me, Jesus is the one who gave his life for my sin. When I realize, especially during Easter, what God has done for me, I cannot stand aside. It may sound like a cliché, but I feel nothing but gratitude for knowing him.

I may have complicated my life with Jesus, but today, as a soon-to-be 50-year-old, I know that when we try to simplify our lives, it does not lead in a good direction. In this sense, I have complicated my life, but paradoxically, many things have become easier for me and I have matured. I’m glad about this complication.