Slovakia: Jubilee year for Vendelín Javorka

by Bohumil Petrík Žilina - In the Diocese of Žilina, Slovakia, the jubilee year of the death of Jesuit Vendelín Javorka has begun, under the motto "Be a missionary wherever you are." "He was not a hero according to the criteria of this world, but from the perspective of love for Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel," writes Bishop Tomáš Galis of Žilina in his pastoral letter for the jubilee year. Vendelín Javorka, Bishop Galis continues, "lived in a time of ideologies that advocated a Europe without God." Today, he says, "there is another temptation: to forget our Christian roots, to resign ourselves to spiritual emptiness, to reduce faith to the level of intimacy." During the celebratory Mass marking the opening of the jubilee, Father Jozef Šofranko, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Slovakia, emphasized that Javorka was "profoundly Jesuit" and at the same time possessed unique qualities: "His path led him far beyond the borders of our country: to Rome, China, and Ukraine. He