Holy Father, we thank you for the love which you have shown our ancestral land and its Church, during the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Baptism of Lithuania.
Your prayer, attention and love for Lithuania will provide support for us, continuing a tradition of six hundred years of fidelity to the Apostolic Sec. We pledge that, following the example of our forefathers, we will do everything possible so that the tics of atheism might not tear our ancestral land away from the rock of Saint Peter, just as in the past neither Protestantism nor Orthodoxy were able to tear it away. We will always accompany Your Holiness with prayer and love along the difficult way of your sacred duties.
Catholic Lithuania
We sincerely thank all those who remembered Catholic Lithuania as it celebrated the 600-year jubilee of its baptism:
The Bishops' Conferences of the U.S.A., Brazil, England and other countries and the World Conference of Major Superiors, all of which proclaimed and carried out days of prayer for Lithuania and the Church ol Lithuania.
We thank the cardinals and bishops who wanted to come for the principle festivities of the jubilee which took place in Vilnius: His Eminence Cardinal Hopner, President of the Bishops' Conference of Germany; His Eminence, Cardinal Archbishop Bernardin of Chicago, that great friend of Lithuania; Cardinal Glemp, the Primate of Poland; Archbishop Groer of Vienna, and many others. You were not allowed to participate in the jubilee celebration, but Catholic Lithuania will always look for you as most honorable guests.
We sincerely thank government leaders who remembered Lithuania and the jubilee of its baptism: The Australian Senate and President Reagan of the United States.
Our thanks to all individuals and organizations who remembered this anniversary of the baptism of Lithuania: in the U.S.A., the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and other countries.
We are particularly grateful to the sixty-six members of the United States Congress who, on the occasion of the jubilee, wrote to Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev of the U.S.S.R. Central Committee concerning the release of priest-prisoners of conscience.
May the good God reward you all!
