LIGHT FROM BEHIND THE BAR True stories of terror, agony, and hope

Abstract

This writing is not an article in its ordinary sense nor is it book review. It is rather a reflection on a book entitled “Light From Behind The Bar” (Middlegreen,United Kingdom: St. Paul Publications, 1990). The book is a compilation of letters from members of the Red Brigadesand other Italian terrorists to Father Carmelo Di Giovani, an Italian priest from the Apostolic Catholic Society of the Pallotine. Some of these terrorists wrote the letters after they were released from prison, and some others wrote while they were still inside, spending 15 or 30 years of imprisonment, even life sentence. Here we can see that terrorism startsfrom a noble desire to pursue justice. But when the angermeets naïveté and arrogance it turns bad indeed. Only aspiritual encounter with God’s forgiveness, embodied by thechurch, can bring these youth back home to the right path.