A Discussion with Father Damjan Ristic, S.J., Pastor, International Catholic Community, Ljubljana, Slovenia

With: Damjan Ristic Berkley Center Profile

June 1, 2016

Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in June 2016 undergraduate student Sarah Jannarone interviewed Father Damjan Ristic, S.J., the pastor for the international Catholic community in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In this interview, Ristic discusses the community for young people facilitated by the Jesuits in Slovenia, as well as some of the challenges Catholics face in Slovenia’s post-communist context.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your work?

Let me begin by giving a little background behind this church. This whole complex, including St. Joseph’s Church, was built after the great earthquake, which happened in 1895, and it was made a votive church, meaning the church was raised in order to prevent another earthquake from happening. So they built this humongous church, which is one of the biggest churches in the near surrounding. However, it was never really finished because World War I came, and ammunition was in it. Nothing serious went on after World War I in this church, though I think the Jesuits were persecuted at that time. During World War II the church hosted ammunition again, and after the war the government made it into a film studio. None of those things were really proper functions for a church.

Once the regime fell, people were hoping to get the things back that were taken away from them. The Church of St Joseph’s, plus the complex, were eventually given back. The church was used and abused, then left in a certain condition.

Since getting the church back, we were really looking for what our purpose would be here. The idea that we came up with was to bring as many people that were interested in the Jesuits here, so some organizations like the Catholic Teachers Association or different volunteer groups have their offices here. These were all connected with Jesuits, more or less tightly. But after hosting so many organizations, the question became, who are we as Jesuits?

So we went searching into who we are and what our charism is, and our charism always has been education and working with young students. So the idea has come bit by bit to really start something for students. Students have always been a part of St. Joseph’s, but we really wanted to give it a Jesuit note, which soon developed into working with international students in response to some Erasmus [international exchange program] students that came to me in 2007 and asked me to give a Mass in English. At the same time, the diplomatic corps here went to the bishop and asked the same thing. So there is a multilingual Mass at the Franciscan church, but it does not foster a sense of community as such. Soon the Erasmus students came, and the diplomats came, and the people working at embassies came. The nature of this Mass has been every year it starts from scratch. So September comes, and maybe there are five to 10 people remaining from last year. The whole thing for me is to get in touch and try to find people who might be interested in having Mass in English.

How is the community that is facilitated here important to education?

So I thought from the beginning I noticed something: that these people didn’t just come to worship, they also came to stay. They wanted to share their experience of their life here and of their life in general because they find themselves in a different environment, and so they face different opportunities and temptations. Every year it has been a different experience because different people come, and there is no way of imposing my ideas on them. The thing is to see who you have—who are they, what are their gifts, what are their hopes—and I ask them what we should do, and people come up with ideas.

This year with the arrival of Father Peter Rozic, who founded the residential college in Maribor, we invited Erasmus students to fill some of our vacancies here and become our residential students. This is the beginning of our own residential college here, which will open next year.

So we got our first set of guys this year. But we will become co-ed next year. In Maribor there are mainly girls, but it’s a different culture, as it’s a different culture with just guys. And we’re learning. I mean, I am kind of used to working with guys. When I was a young Jesuit I was working in Africa in a high school as a bordering and discipline master. I had 120 teenagers that I lived with day and night. But it was a great experience that I loved very much. The Bible Brew that we host here was an all men’s thing at the beginning, and then we realized that we had to invite girls! Eventually, they came.

What’s been very important to us is education. People who come here have good conditions to study. It’s a rather peaceful place, and they have a nice place where they can relax and have friends over. They can have a party or two or something like that, which is normal. But then we also offer this Bible Brew—we did not impose it on them. There was this other group, the non-residents, that were coming, and I invited them to our programs like Bible Brew. The only condition that we gave them to be here is to maintain a Christian-friendly community; we didn’t want to proselytize or overexpose our ideology.

How do you define "Christian-friendly"?

It means that they might be Christian, or maybe they used to be Christian. Basically if someone were a Christian, they would not bash them here. If you are a Christian in this house you can be relaxed about it, because sometimes when you go to other students' dorms it’s not as easy, and they have to kind of hide it or deny it or do stupid things to prove that they aren't unlike the others. I think that is a very important thing. It’s not education in the sense that it’s about all the chapters from a certain book or that it’s about all you’ve learned, but that you are learning to be who you are. This is informal, but I think it’s just as important—if not more important—than what you learn in a book.

How is this type of education important to university students in particular?

Most of our students here are lawyers. Law knows its own nature, but since we are doing some Bible studies the Gospel perspective comes in as well and presents us with questions like: What is right? What is just? Who decides that? Do I respond only to the books of the law, or to something higher? Those are such questions that arise, and it’s not because they are here, so we are going to tell them what the way is. I think it’s very important that people have a space and time and opportunity to ask questions like that for themselves, and to sometimes be challenged by other students and occasionally by a Jesuit father. So this is informal learning as well as a type of religious education. First of all we are getting to know the scriptures and the Bible, which could be a formal aspect of learning, but another aspect of that is asking what it means in life and to society.

They’re also learning about different cultures because all of these people come from different countries. We have Italians, Spaniards, Americans, Dutch, you name it. It’s like Europe with its different languages and histories; in this setting, everyone has to think of how to come together. I have to say it has been a very positive experience of mutual respect and learning and appreciating differences.

In general, are there other opportunities like this provided by other organizations?

This is one of the reasons why we’ve decided to do this. The Franciscan and Ursuline churches and others have a quite strong pastoral service for Slovenian Catholic students, but we saw a need for community and education services.

Within the context of Slovenia, is a Christian-friendly environment difficult to find?

There is of course a strong division between the Church and state, which is fine. Unfortunately, it’s not only a division but antagonism from both sides. If the wrong party is leading the country the Christians might become intolerant, and vice versa.

There is also a tradition of belittling Christians since World War II, things like calling them unintelligent or naive or whatever. As a young person you don’t want to identify with that, so although you might feel that you’re a Christian you may find yourself doubting that. I think what is important and what we are trying to create—and I think we are succeeding in some ways here-—is to create a Christian community which is open-minded. We want to have a community that understands these sort of dynamics, that can understand other people’s positions, though they may not identify with them. At the same time we’re willing to invite other people to our Christian circles and show them respect and love. This isn’t something that we speak of much, but I think deep down Christians desire that other people will know Christ and feel liberated by him.

How does the Jesuit College Magis promote social justice?

I think so, yes. When you say social justice it can be narrowed down to fighting for the people, or it could be what I’m talking about right now—it’s mutual respect, it’s equal opportunities, it’s for all people.

To be honest I am not very familiar with what exactly they are doing, but I think at least they are opening issues that are concerned with such things, and that already is something. Now whether they have had any projects or something like that I’m not aware of so much. But I know that there have been good things like culture exchange between Budapest and Maribor, which is a great thing. In Europe there is a great emphasis on regional collaborations. Since people were divided by borders that may no longer exist, what is really important is fostering a feeling of belonging to one another. I see a great need for that.

Would there be an opportunity for this elsewhere?

I think they could have opportunities like this, but they would be done differently. We are Jesuits, and we have this Jesuit way of seeing things. It’s what we call our spirituality, and it is Catholic in the sense that is universal. For example, I see you as an American, but at the same time I see the you who is sitting with me and it is just as precious. It’s the vision that God has for people. The way God sees us is the way that he meant us to be. We are gifted people: we have gifts, and these gifts are to be used for the benefit of all. You see, if you enter any experience with this sort of attitude it changes it a little. You don’t go into a situation asking what’s in it for you. Of course that’s natural, but if that is the only thing, you can join the European Volunteer Corps—something like doing a gap year and finding yourself. That is important, but the added value is the Christian, the Jesuit, the Catholic energy, the universal energy.

How might the Slovenian communist past affect Catholics in the present?

Well, there are differences between generations. For example, my parents were raised socially communist. It was their religion, and Tito was their demagogue. They believed that the rest of the world was corrupt, but that eventually everyone would come to the full knowledge of the illuminated state of Yugoslavia. People used to believe that, and those who didn’t would escape. Many escaped after World War II in order not to get killed; there were hundreds of thousands of people that were killed after the war by the Tito regime. This all left very deep wounds. One of the most difficult things, of course in addition to the violence, is that you were forbidden from saying anything about that because if you did, you might disappear. So you know that things are awfully wrong, but all the same time you have to hail the system. That left people in a cognitive dissonance. It was very confusing. The Church was for some people a sanctuary to get away from this reality.

Then Tito died, which means he’s no demagogue and that things are going to fall apart sooner or later. Of course the myth started to tumble; the bones started to surface from beneath the earth. I think graves of hundreds of thousands of people were found. And there was despair but, on the other hand, there was hope that we would all know what is true and what is not. But the truth is that denial is sometimes more important than acknowledgement, especially for those that hailed the former system. Many people now live in denial or say that it wasn’t that bad. Then, of course, those who were persecuted and lost their people are outraged when they hear such things.

So you have two parts of the older generation—the one that has been persecuted and the persecutors. There has been no recognition in terms of who has been responsible for anything, and that has been the case to this day. So a war is still going on between those two generations.

As for my generation, we grew up in Tito’s period, but then he died. In some ways we had high hopes. Yugoslavia was tumbling down...we were all hoping that different times were coming. Then Yugoslavia fell apart, and this terrible thing happened, the Balkan War. In some ways we’re happy that we’re not in the same country, but on the other hand there is such a burden we had to live with because the price of this freedom was so expensive. It was the price of so many lives. And I think my generation don’t want to go there anymore. They think we should just let the older generation fight and die, but we have to be responsible about who we are and who our children are going to become. It’s not to deny it, it’s not to forget it, but we don't want to be pulled into hatred.

Now the hatred is among the Catholics and former communists. I think sometimes the Church has not played the most positive role in terms of calling for forgiveness. They say forgive but not forget, and that people should be held responsible, and of course that is true. However, this does not necessarily lead to a resolution; it only leads to further aggravation.

When it comes to Christianity the younger generation is very ignorant. They did not receive much of the Gospel or lessons about the Church’s history. For them Jesus is somewhere among Spiderman and Superman and mythology. They are open to spirituality, but what is really difficult for many is for them to commit to something. When it comes to religion there is a lack of commitment to who we are as people. The previous generation thought that they knew. What this generation is getting are stories of who we might be through media. I think it is important to help young people. In some ways this is religious education but also a very human education—to try to figure out what their calling is. It’s a very complex world, and I think the Gospel has much to give to this world through the questions that Christ asked.

I think this is why Jesuit education is important, because it asks those questions. There is something very interesting from Ignatian thought: the idea that everyone is invited to search for themselves but share in the community. You see, that’s a fine thing. You are not on your own, but eventually you must be the one who is responsible for yourself and also for others. There’s this expression that we use in the Church, called communion. Communion is usually something that you eat, but it’s also community—it’s a group of people that belong to one another and the understanding that everyone’s lives influence the community.

How do you see the Jesuit mission working in Slovenia? Or, what do you hope that the Jesuits can give to Slovenia?

I think mostly what I’ve been saying is that I hope that we can address people who are searching. There are a bunch of people who are searching. Then there are people that need education, but the most important thing is that those people have values. Even Peter Parker needs to learn that with great power comes responsibility. It’s the same thing with the Jesuit alumni: with the knowledge that you’ve received comes great responsibility, but also great generosity.

Were you raised Catholic?

My mom was Catholic but not practicing, and my father is Orthodox. I was 14 years old when I read the Bible for cover to cover, and once read I could not unread it. My first experience with God was I was lying on the grass and above the grass there were trees and clouds, and everything was going above the sky. I wondered what was above the sky. It was the first time that it came into my mind that God was above all. And that idea remained with me, at least latently if not actively. I was 14, and I went to church. I didn’t understand a thing. When I was 25 I was doing a gap year, and I went to Madagascar and met some missionaries there. They made such an impression on me that I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

What are you most proud of?

Do you mean in the American sense or in the European sense? If you ask that in Europe the sentiment is that you shouldn’t be proud of anything. But in the American sense, I think I’m most proud of the fact that I easily fall in love with people. I don’t know—sometimes it’s not a great trait to have because people leave, but it really does happen. When I see people coming to church I fall in love with them! I feel a sort of attraction—I think of them, I pray for them, I dream about them, I don’t sleep over them. I think that’s my greatest source of pride.
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