Forgiveness News
Polish, Ukrainian Church Leaders Pledge Mutual Forgiveness
Catholic News Service, Warsaw, Poland – Catholic leaders in Poland and Ukraine last week pledged mutual forgiveness for the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians during World War II.
Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych (head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church) and Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl (president of the Polish bishops’ conference) asked forgiveness and also appealed to all Ukrainians and Poles in the world “to open their hearts and minds bravely to mutual forgiveness and reconciliation.”
“Neither violence nor ethnic cleansing can ever be a method of solving conflicts between neighboring peoples or nations, or justified on political, economic or religious grounds,” said the church leaders’ joint statement, published June 28 in Warsaw.
The statement was timed to commemorate the 1943-44 massacres in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, in which up to 100,000 Poles and Ukrainians were killed by rival sides under Nazi occupation.
Around 80,000 Poles were murdered in 1943-44 by fighters with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in an ethnic cleansing campaign to clear non-Ukrainians from what would become Ukraine.
Dozens of Catholic priests were killed and churches burned during the atrocities, which peaked in July and August 1943. Polish self-defense groups in various regions retaliated with the murder of up to 30,000 Ukrainians.
Read the full story: Polish, Ukrainian church leaders mark anniversary of WWII massacres.
How Do You Forgive the Teen Who Murdered Your Son?
Jaime Gough was a curious 14-year-old Miami boy who loved sports and music. In 2004 his best friend Michael Hernandez lured him into their middle school bathroom with the promise of a revealing a secret. Instead he slit Jaime’s throat, stabbed him 42 times with a serrated folding knife, then casually walked back to class covered in blood.
According to his own journal, Hernandez wanted to be a serial killer and had to start somewhere. So he killed the easiest target, Jaime. His notes revealed ambitions of mass murder and a step-by-step plan of how to begin with those closest to him.
Jaime’s parents, Maria and George Gough, struggled through the ordeal of the funeral and then came the trial–the agonizing process of allowing the system to work. In the middle of that trial, they decided that the only way they could live with themselves was to forgive Michael.
“Maria and I have forgiven him,” George said. “When I put myself in the place of Michael’s parents I began to understand. They had lost their son too.”
In the nine years since Jaime’s death, Maria and George have been telling their story on TV, on the radio, and person to person. They have also turned their story into a book, From Fighting to Forgiving: Learning to Let Go, by Jason Wood. They believe they’ve kept Jaime alive by telling the tale, over and over. They say the “fruit of forgiveness” has honored and given Jaime a legacy, the process of showing other victims of tragedy how to let go of hate and anger.
Read the full story: How Do You Forgive the Kid Who Murdered Your Son?
Forgiveness Offered to Rebels, to Colombia
FoxNews.com – Five years after being kidnapped and held captive in the jungles of Colombia for six years, former Colombian presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, is calling for forgiveness toward the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and as a general attitude as a pathway to healing in her country.
“We are all, in Colombia, responsible for this horrible war. We are all part of a generation that, with forgiveness, must assume this responsibility.”
When asked if she would ever consider forgiving the FARC commander who held her prisoner, she said this: “Life gave him the possibility to understand what he made us go through since he’s now a prisoner, like we were,” she said. “If I had him in front of me, I would simply hug him.”
Read the full story: “Five years after freedom, Betancourt urges forgiveness.”
I Forgave Him Then Wiped Him Off My Hands Like Dirt
Chicago Sun-Times – For Cook County Assistant Public Defender Jeanne Bishop, whose sister and brother-in-law–Nancy and Richard Langert –were slain by high school student David Biro in April 1990, forgiveness was “right away.”
But telling him personally was something else.
“I told myself I forgave him and then wiped him off my hands like dirt,” Bishop said. “I thought forgiving David for what he’d done was enough, but I never thought about communicating with him. I just wanted to separate myself from him. . . leave him in the dust.”
Several months ago, at the urging of a friend, Bishop decided to begin a reconciliation process with Biro and personally present her forgiveness.
“I wrote him a letter and he responded immediately,” she said, a 15-page handwritten letter claiming responsibility for the murders–something he had denied during his trial. He apologized to me and my family.”
Last February, they met “face to face,” she said.
“I touched the hand of the man who held the gun that killed my sister and he told me he wished he could undo it all. He was remorseful. It was profoundly moving to see this person I had mythologized. It was good to shake his hand and look him in the eye.
“Someone once told me not forgiving was like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I needed to do this for God and Nancy and me.” As for the future, Bishop says, “I’m just beginning this journey of reconciliation with David.”
Read the full story: “Forgiveness for a Killer.”
Forgiveness on the Killing Fields of Cambodia
The Huffington Post – As a boy of eleven, Sokreaksa Himm and his Cambodian family were forced-marched from their home in Siem Reap out into the rural area to work in farming. It was there that he watched as the villagers hacked to death his father and brothers and later his mother. Lying under dead bodies in the pit in which the killers had dumped their victims, he waited until they left to make his escape.
Himm was one of the lucky ones. “The killing fields” of Cambodia were as foreboding as “The ovens” of Auschwitz. In four years — 1975-1979 — as many as three million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge regime or died from starvation or disease. As a result, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot is sometimes described as “the Hitler of Cambodia.”
After Himm escaped from his family’s killers, he was able to cross the border into Thailand and was eventually sent to Canada where he was cared for by World Vision (an international Christian relief organization) at one of their refugee centers. There, his young mind was not only plagued by the memory of his family now dead — with the exception of his sister — but feelings of revenge for those who had so devastated his family and his life. Those feelings began to change, however, after he enrolled at Providence University College near Winnipeg, Canada–a school that proclaims: We help you see your education through a Christian worldview.
“I could tell that something was wrong with me, and underneath the fa??ade I suddenly realized that I needed to forgive totally,” Himm recalls.??”Forgiveness is not easy, but if I allowed the big ball of fire to keep burning inside my heart, my life would not be worth living. . . When I could not forgive, I was actually burying myself into the grave of bitterness, anger and hatred.”
Determined, Himm returned to Cambodia and to the village of Kokpreach where he met with the man who killed his father and the one who killed his mother. He tied a Cambodian scarf around each of their necks as a symbol of forgiveness. Then he gave them a Cambodian Bible and read from Luke 23:34 — “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…” — and in so doing, offered his forgiveness.
Himm has since found his sister and returned to his family home in Siem Reap where he’s determined to build a new and better life for himself and his fellow Cambodians.
Read the full story: “A Face in Pol Pot’s Killing Fields.”
