It is not easy to sum up more than ten years in Slovenia, Croatia and Romania.

I can say that I felt immediately at ease. My early times in Slovenia were demanding, because it was so completely different to where I had come from. I did not speak the language; the weather was very cold with the typical smell of coal burning in stoves inside seemingly every house. One of my first enduring impressions was the sense of order and discipline. I can recall going to buy fruit with one of my friends from the community. While he joined the queue outside the shop, I stood slightly to the side. Then I noticed that there was another queue forming behind me… I soon realised that the same was happening at bus stops too. I was very impressed by it.

After 5 years in Slovenia I then moved to Croatia which accompanied an immediate sense of freedom: I was starting to study the language at university, I was meeting many people, exploring and discovering the city I was living in and doing many interesting things which I could not do before. I found the Croats similar to my own people: warm, welcoming and appreciators of good food.

Fall of the Wall
This was an unforgettable experience lived with my friends moment by moment, aware that what we were seeing on the TV was the world in the process of changing!

The war
The war in the Balkans was one of my strongest experiences of that period. It was a strange one in that Zagabria, where I lived at the time, was not involved in the conflict directly. The first few days, however, were terrifying because of the presence of snipers shooting randomly at civilians. My strongest memory however is not so much of destruction but of solidarity among people. It was very moving to witness the arrival of humanitarian aid in the form of food and clothes. Around that time my parents both passed away in Naples. I went back to Italy, emptied my family home in Naples and brought everything back with me to Croatia to help those in need.
I recall how in 1993, still in the midst of war, we managed to organise a youth festival for approximately 3.000 young Catholic and Orthodox Christians, as well as Muslims from former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova. One of the most emotional moments was a chant by a Muslim choir! The event was broadcasted by TV and radio and was on the front pages of all newspapers in the capital.

Dacia (Romania)
My experience in this country was one of coming from a life of prosperity and wellbeing to a situation of relative poverty. There was a sense in which the communist regime had managed to destroy all cultural, civic and folk tradition of that country. I was shocked! I recall a youngster whom I knew from having seen him around and who asked me for money. At the time, I could not help him because I did not have the amount he required. The episode made me think a lot: why did he asked me of all people? Because he knew I was Italian and thought I can return at any point where I came from. Real poverty is a feeling of not having anything and no one “able to help”.
As in Zagabria, also in Romania I experienced a deep communion among brothers and sisters who were looking for something that would finally give meaning to their life: Love! And with many of them, just like with those in Slovenia and Croatia to this day I have strong brotherly relationships.

by Gennaro Lamagna

Rossiya mon Amour  

Winter 1991, Moscow. In the early afternoon, my plane touched down in Sheremetyevo Airport.

The arrivals hall was poorly lit, the queue outside the passport controls and visas, long. I had gotten a job at the famous Lomonosov University and with all my possessions was moving to Russia. It was already dark outside and I had the impression that this was the end of the world. Then I heard an announcement: Connections for Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk which made me realise that this was where everything started.

Magical beginnings

In Moscow, I lived in a small ecumenical community. Our apartment on Volochaevskaya street was in a working-class quarter, which did not feel particularly safe. When I asked why we didn’t move, like all the foreigners, on the secure embassy grounds, I was told: “Not to worry because where we were, we were protected by the proletariat.”

Contact with our neighbours was indeed spontaneous and easy: elderly women, sitting in the courtyard day and night knew exactly of all the comings and goings; the spontaneity of the children made me forget the awful smell of the dirty staircase. Our new friends – colleagues, students, old and young – all came gladly to Volochaevskaya. They don’t mind that the sofa in our apartment was half eaten by mice and that there was a water leak from a tube in the corridor. The beginnings of our deepening friendship helped us see everything in a different light and forget all the rest.

“Spiritual children” of Alexander Men

In the early 1990s production in Russia decreased rapidly. Shops were empty, everything was scarce. Religious life appeared to be extinct. Within the walls of former churches there were vodka making factories, offices, shops …

We had a long-standing acquaintance with the Russian Orthodox priest Alexander Men. Since the 1960s he had clandestinely baptised thousands of people and had shown a level of ecumenical openness that was dangerous for his time. A lively Orthodox Christian community formed around him. When he was violently killed, he left behind his “spiritual children” as traumatised orphans.

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name” (Mt 18:20)

Soon many people joined us. We lived together the word of the Scripture, for example, ” Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). As they said, they found a new homeland with us. “You don’t proselytise, instead you help us to become yeast for a self-renewal of the Russian Orthodox Church.” After years of spiritual drought, we experienced with them and many others a new Spring. I had never been so happy. The thirst for spiritual life united us despite our cultural differences, diverse upbringing or mentality.

My discovery

In the 1990s – with perestroika and glasnost – many organisations, among them sects, as well as genuine charities from a variety of Churches (Renovabis, Kirche in Not, Bonifatiuswerk, …) and religious Movements (Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare, Community of Sant’Egidio, …) succeeded in entering countries behind the so-called “Iron Curtin”. Some stayed on and some have since left.

What is my personal experience as a citizen of Western Germany after nearly two decades in Russia? I have received much more from this country than I could ever give: among which the gift of deep contemplation which during the Russian Orthodox Liturgy allowed my relationship with God to grow deeper; solid friendships which continue in spite of distance and which reminds me of how much I am loved. In short, I have rediscovered my vocation as a Christian and as a woman: I am called to love.

I believe that during these years we have, in our own way, re-written the Acts of the Apostles. The reality of “having love for one another and having everything in common” (see Acts 4:32) both marked and moulded us. In this light, everything appeared as new: the Gospel goes much further … well beyond Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk!

by Beatriz Lauenroth