In the last few days, a question kept hammering in my mind. “Quo Vadis?”—which in Latin means “whither thou goest?” It obviously reminded me of the homonymous historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero and later on in 1951 made into a movie. The phrase actually appears in Chapter 69 of the novel retelling the apocryphal story Acts of Peter in which Peter flees Rome because of all the persecutions against the Christians, but on the Appian Way, meets Jesus and asks him “Quo vadis, Domine?” “Where are you going, Lord?’ to which Jesus replies, that He is going to Rome to be crucified a second time, if he (Peter) escapes, which shames Peter into going back to Rome to accept his martyrdom.
Yes, “Quo Vadis?”—where are you going? Or where are we all going? Where are we all heading? There isn’t a single day, when you open the newspaper and don’t get overwhelmed with a load of depressing news about war-ravaged countries:
- In numbers, the Middle East and North Africa is the most affected region with more than 45 armed conflicts currently taking place. In Sudan, a civil war between two rival factions of the military government of Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began during Ramadan on 15 April 2023. Fighting has been concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region. As of 21 January 2024, at least 13,000 –15,000 people had been killed and 33,000 others were injured while over 6.5million were internally displaced and more than two million others had fled the country as refugees. Since 2014, Yemen has been undergoing a civil war with various groups claiming to constitute the official government.
Br Carmel Duca MC
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