‘I believe the Lord wants a change in the Church’: A private dialogue with the Jesuits in the Baltics
The pope enters the room of the Nunciature and greets the Jesuits one by one, starting with the provincial, Fr. Vidmantas Šimkūna. In all, 28 Jesuits are present: 22 from the province of Lithuania and Latvia, two from the United States with close links to Lithuania, and four Jesuit bishops: Lionginas Virbalas, Archbishop of Kaunas; his predecessor Sigitas Tamkevičius who had been imprisoned by the KGB; Jonas Boruta, bishop emeritus of Telšiai; and Joseph Werth, bishop of Novosibirsk, in Russia, who did his novitiate in Lithuania. The pope speaks in Italian and his words are translated into Lithuanian by Archbishop Virbalas.