Secretum

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A year has passed since I last wrote to you. You never replied.

A few months ago, I was suddenly transferred (but that you perhaps already know) to Romania. I am one of a handful of priests to be found in Constantia, a small town on the Black Sea.

Here, the word "poverty" takes on that relentless, irrevocable character that it once had in our part of the world. Dreary, decrepit houses; ragged children playing in dirty, nameless streets; women with tired faces blankly staring from the windows of horrendous blocks of flats; the legacy of real socialism, bare and dilapidated: wherever one turns, greyness and wretchedness.

This is the city, this is the land to which I was sent a few months ago. I am called here to carry out my pastoral mission, nor shall I fail in my duties. The misery of this country will not distract me from them, nor will the sadness which pervades every inch of it.

As you well know, the place from which I came was very different. Until a few months ago, I was Bishop of Como, the gay lakeside city which inspired the immortal prose of Manzoni; that ancient pearl of opulent Lombardy, laden with noble memories, with its characteristic old town, its businessmen, its captains of the fashion industry, its footballers and its prosperous silk manufacturers.

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