Amid Fears of World War III, Can We Become “Islands of Peace?”
When I spent an extended period of time in Italy two years ago, my landlord was a delightful 86-year-old man named Franco Malatesta. If you want to know what war is like, just talk with people who have personally experienced it. Franco’s memories drove home for me the futility and absurdity of war.
Franco was six when World War II broke out. He lived in Cassino, the same city in central Italy that my grandmother Giovanna Valente had emigrated from years before. Seeking safety from bombardment, Franco’s family was forced to separate and flee.
Some of his siblings went with his mother to live with relatives in Rome. He and his father sought shelter with another set of relatives in the countryside.
Overlooking Cassino stands Montecassino, the monastery where Europe’s patron saint, St. Benedict, wrote his famous Rule for monks and lived out the final years of his life. Believing Germans soldiers were encamped in the monastery, Allied forces (including Americans) relentlessly bombed the site.
The city was reduced to rubble as well. There were no Germans hiding in the monastery. It was a strategic blunder of war.
Franco says that when his father returned to Cassino for the first time after the war had ended and saw the devastation, he dropped to his knees and wept. Recalling the moment, Franco too begins to weep.
Franco tells me this story over a lunch of fried calamari, baked cod and roasted peppers in his favorite neighborhood trattoria in Cassino. Some eighty years later, this memory of war still moves him to tears, even in a public place.
I am reminded of Franco’s story as tensions escalate between the U.S. and Iran with the outcome far from certain. Memes and jokes about a possible World War III are trending on social media. Some commentators dismiss them as attempts at dark humor.
There is no humor in war, only darkness, as Franco’s story illustrates. As the tragic and totally unnecessary deaths of 176 people from seven countries aboard a Ukrainian airliner shot down over Tehran make all too clear.
Franco told me another story I’ve never forgotten. A few days after word came that the war had ended, Franco was walking alone near a woods. Suddenly, he spotted a German soldier, no more than a teenager, passing between some trees.
The young soldier had separated from his regiment and was apparently lost. He asked Franco if he had seen any other German soldiers.
“Weren’t you afraid to speak to a German?” I asked Franco.
“Why should I be? He wasn’t much older than me,” Franco said. “And anyway, the war was over.”
Just like that, two people who might have been expected to try to kill each other a few days earlier were now having a conversation on the edge of a forest.
Here is the part of the story that touched me deeply. Franco had been carrying a tin around his neck containing a few pieces of dry bread. It was a small insurance against starvation that his father insisted he carry. Franco removed the tin with the bread and gave it to the German soldier.
That’s when I started to cry at the restaurant table. Such a small act. Such enormous compassion.
As I reflect on the events unfolding between the U.S. and Iran, I’m also reminded of an interview I did for U.S. Catholic with the well-known peace activist Jim Forest, who was a friend of Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day.
Like Merton and Day, Forest came to believe there is no such thing as a just war in the nuclear age.
I asked Jim why more people of faith aren’t pouring into the streets demanding just and peaceful policies from our government.
His response was somewhat surprising, coming as it did from someone who had participated in countless anti-war and civil rights protests in the 1960s.
“It’s a time for pray-ins,” Forest declared. “It’s not a time to get out in the streets and create a climate of greater rage.”
Forest advises, “Learning to walk more slowly, learning to breathe more mindfully, to take unwelcome tasks like washing the dishes and waiting in line in the supermarket and making them into sacramental events … praying instead of grumbling.”
In this way, Forest says, we can become — in our homes, communities or wherever we might be — “islands of peace.”
This week, I will try to imitate my Italian friend Franco Malatesta by engaging in random acts of kindness. Within my own small patch of earth, I will seek to be for others an “island of peace.”
