With Buddhists seated in the front row, he recalled the persecutions of which they were victims at the hands of the region's Communist dictatorships: "May the memory of those sufferings give us the strength to transform the dark wounds into sources of light, the ignorance of violence into wisdom of life, the evil that ruins the good that builds."

"The fact of being together in the same place is already a message," affirmed the Vicar of Christ. What would Soeren Kierkegaard have thought of that message - especially of the speeches? Surely that it meant the abolition of Christianity. The Kierkegaardian salt, having lost its flavor, entered into the composition of the salad together with Buddhist writings, Gandhi, and St. Francis of Assisi, all quoted in the mass.