麻豆约拍

Good morning. Who knows the mysterious reasons why some events from our childhood lodge in the memory while others fade?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I don't know why the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, former prime minister of Italy, made such an impact on me as a ten year old boy but it did. Perhaps because we prayed for him every day at school, his murder seemed to me especially terrible - even though, as a child in 1970s Northern Ireland, assassination was an almost weekly diet.

He was buried on this day in 1978.

Even now, whenever I'm in Rome, some impulse brings me to the gloomy side street where Aldo Moro's body was found. A personal ritual to say a prayer for him.

Almost forty years on, his suffering still evokes for me the plight of anyone, anywhere, imprisoned wrongly - confined perhaps in a space too small for them to stretch their limbs; wondering in the torrent of emotions all detainees speak of, if those they love think of them; in fear; not knowing if any future lies open to them; held, maybe in darkness, not able to see the sun.

I know that for me this would be the least endurable torment - as it was for Aldo Moro. In the final letter he wrote from captivity to his wife, the deeply Catholic Moro, realized that he might not ever see freedom or her face again and wondered what the divine world beyond this earth would be like: "I would like to understand with my little eyes how we will see afterwards. If there were be light, that would be wonderful."

Creator of light, as the dawn rises on another day, receive my gratitude that I can see it in freedom. Send the radiance of your comfort into the hearts of all who need it today - especially prisoners, those held in unjust captivity and all who await them.

Amen