I had already tried my hand at Bible smuggling behind the Iron Curtain into Moscow and Leningrad when the call came from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). I was asked if I would be willing to take similar risks, this time smuggling theology books into Prague for an underground seminary.
It was the early 1980s, and the Cold War was at a particularly bitter stage. Yuri Andropov – “the Butcher of Budapest” – had become General Secretary of the Communist Party, and had launched a crackdown on all dissidents and those who slipped in from the West to help them.
I was reminded that the Czechoslovak authorities, in a bid to stamp out the Christian presence in the country, had decided to outlaw all Catholic ordinations. No priests, no Mass; no Mass, no Church; no Church, no faith. Within a generation the atheist state would triumph totally, or so they thought.
But the Church had gone underground. The seminaries were all closed and theological libraries were guarded under lock and key. Couriers were needed to carry in two suitcases each containing almost no underwear or clothes, but instead crammed with as much Aquinas and Augustine as could be transported. This helped recreate theological libraries in secret, so that underground seminarians could be trained and formed and then ordained out of sight of the eye of the all-seeing and deeply malevolent Communist state.
There was a second part to the mission, though. The media in the West seemingly refused to believe that there was no religious freedom under Communism, so a team of unofficial court reporters – mainly unobtrusive elderly ladies sitting at the back of court rooms – produced the evidence of criminal trials detailing the sentences and names of those who had been sent to the gulag for their faith, so that the truth could be published.
The names and the facts of the charges and sentences were carefully recorded and written in tiny handwriting on long narrow strips of some kind of cloth; these were then wound round the courier’s (my) thighs.
But it suddenly looked like it might all go very wrong. As I tried to board my plane, smuggling the samizdat out to the West, I was suddenly and unexpectedly pulled to one side to be subjected to a finger tip search of my whole body. I thought I was doomed – then a split-second miracle distracted the official just as his fingers got to my knees, brushed against the tape, and I escaped. The list was published, and the truth was told. I’ve dined out on that miracle in the years since. And so I have a personal interest in both the ACN and miracles from heaven to sustain it, which is why I was so interested when I heard they were still happening in the ACN’s world.
At a carol service in support of its work at the Brompton Oratory towards the end of last year, John Pontifex, head of press for the ACN, read out a moving account of a miracle – told to him first-hand – experienced by Antoine, a Christian captured and imprisoned recently by militant Islamists in Syria. It may remind you, as it reminded me, of the miraculous escape of St Peter from prison in Acts 12. And if you had trouble taking that escape literally, this may help you.
“Antoine explained that one day he had gone to the factory where he worked to find it has been over run by extremists. They seized him, put a gun to his head, a knife to his throat and demanded that he convert to Islam on pain of death. They tied him up and locked him away for 62 days. After that, they told him the next day he would be dispatched to carry out a suicide-bomb mission on the other side of the city. That night, he prayed for deliverance. As dawn broke, he felt what he described as a tap on the shoulder. He said it was Our Lady telling him to get up and make his escape.
“It seemed hopeless to try, given the security in place, but he opened the door of his cell and to his astonishment found it was unlocked. When he stepped into the main hallway, there was nobody about; all the extremists were at early-morning prayers. He made a dash for the main door – miraculously the chain slipped through, and before he knew it he was outside. Having lived in Aleppo all his life, he was quickly able to find his way back to his wife and children.
“Completing his story, a vexed expression came over him. He said he was fearful he and the family would be evicted because they could not keep up payments on their rent. At this point, I handed him some ACN funds. Antoine’s wife looked at her husband and said: ‘Didn’t I always tell you the Lord will never abandon us?’”
<strong>This article appeared in the February edition of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark>HERE</mark></a></strong>.
<em>Photo: Houses of Parliament in Westminster are floodlit in red light to mark #RedWednesday</em>
<em>(Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)</em>
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