What Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Helder Camara and Pedro Casaldaliga of Brazil, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Jean Vanier of l’Arche, Dorothy Day of The Catholic Worker, Frére Roger of Taizé, Gustavo Gutierrez (the Father of the Theology of Liberation), Vivekananda and Gandhi had in common is that they were all prophets of their time—the twentieth century.
“Shoot us first!”
A few years ago I was talking with Giovanni Franzoni—an Italian theologian and ex-Abbot of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, who was laicized by Paul VI because of his involvement in activism and “Communist” politics—about whether there are still prophets in our time, because I could not recall any. He narrated a story of a bus being stopped by the ISIS somewhere in a Middle Eastern country where the ISIS was very active. When they separated the Christians from the Moslems, the Moslem women stood in front of the Christians and courageously told the ISIS fighters that, if they thought of shooting the Christians, they would have to go through them first. Franzoni told me, “These are today’s prophets. They are hidden.”
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Brother Carmel Duca MC
