Fr. A. Poletti Carries Bishop Ferroni to Freedom

One bridge connects the two territories. A few meters of barbed wire separate two worlds and two civilizations. The physical distance can be measured in a few meters. The moral distance, however, cannot be measured. On one side there is liberty, over there the negation of every religious liberty. – Father Ambrogio Poletti, from “The Priest at the Bamboo Curtain”

Under the brim of a grimy, frayed newsboy cap, two sunken eyes rimmed in black stared straight ahead from their sockets, as if frozen from fear. A scraggily beard hung like gray stalactites from cavernous cheeks. Bald patches detailed a survey of where torturers had plucked hairs during interrogations.  Upon a stretcher lay an Italian bishop, 63 years old, frail and weak. His black tunic and dirt-stained pants draped loosely over his bones. Chinese black-cloth shoes – wrapped around and tied with spare twine – swaddled his swollen feet.

(Photo: www.SSPX.org)

Friday, July 28, 5:45 AM: a hundred and fifty pilgrims attend Mass at Immaculate Conception Priory, the SSPX chapel in Post Falls, Idaho, before walking twenty-two miles on asphalt bike paths and abandoned railroad lines through the local towns. That night, they camp in a hay field east of Coeur d’Alene. Saturday, July 29, 6:30 AM: fifty more pilgrims, freed from the duties of the work week, join Friday’s group for a day of trekking across gravel backroads and rough logging trails in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains.