Lithuania's Holy Hill.

During days of tyranny, almost seventy years of it under Communist Soviet regime, Lithuanians turned to an unusual place of pilgrimage for solace from oppression and cruelty. A small round hill with an even smaller one beside it, set between two villages, Jurgeioiai and Domantai, so small they do not appear on a road map, and a small red four-pointed star all by itself signal the whereabouts of the Hill of Crosses, a focal point of peaceful resistance since the Middle Ages for Lithuania's Carholics, who form a large majority of the population of three million.

There are places of holiness on this planet, embellished with the most beautiful, awe-inspiring works of art that the human mind can put into colour, line, stone, and music. So driving past villages, hamlets really, and then onto a narrow unpaved road passing fields with here and there a meagre dwelling, hardly seemed like the usual way to a celebrated place of pilgrimage.

In the northern part of Lithuania, not far from Siauliai, the counry's third largest city after the capital Vilnius, and Kaunas, the ancient capital, seemingly out of nowhere, in flat farming land, there is a mound, far too small for a mountain. It is the Hill of Crosses, a place so sacred even a gigantic forklift, setting up yet another cross seemed to go about its business in a hushed reverent manner.

Communist Era 1945-1989

The Hill and its smaller neighbour are literally submerged in crosses of all sizes, festooned with rosaries, everything piled up on top of the another. During the Communist regime, it was a site for closure for the bereaved, a remembrance of loved ones transported to Siberian work camps or prisons far away, who knew where, with never a trace of them again. In this predominantly Catholic country, the comfort of one's faith was denied, whether as an everyday manifestation, or in times of special need, sorrow, and unspeakable grief. On three separate occasions, bulldozers were sent to obliterate the offerings on the holy ground. With the determination of faith and spiritual resistance, smashed pieces that could be salvaged were restored, new works replaced the losses, all in hours, a miraculously short space of time. It was this iron will of the people, the singlemindedness that prompted ordinary folk to risk their lives in defiance to proclaim their faith, that gave the hill of Crosses the spirituality it has accumulated since the Middle Ages.

In 1993, His Holiness Pope John Paul II on a visit to his beloved Poland, crossed the border into Lithuania and recognized the special steadfastness and faith of the Lithuanian people by saying Mass in the open field at the foot of the Hill. Many thousands arrived and a special platform for the Holy Father together will an altar were put in place--neither the platform nor the altar has been dismantled. In due course, one of the largest crosses of all arrived, a gift from the Holy Father, and it was his cross that our small group of pilgrims watched being put so reverently in place.

Past history

Long before the Christian era--which came to Lithuania in 1387, the last country in Europe to accept Christianity--the Hill had served, so I was told, as the place for hanging those convicted of capital crimes. So it had garnered the sense of a haunted spot over the centuries. When Catholics were singled out for execution at various times in Lithuania's history, the Hill took on an entirely different dimension; the country's history has not been an easy one. The Catholic Church gave the country a strong sense of unification with Poland, while Estonia and Latvia 'germanified' under the German nobility, who were mainly Lutheran.

After the partition of Poland, Lithuania was placed under the control of Tsarist Russia in 1795, to bitter resentment. An uprising in 1830 resulted in a further clampdown: Russian was made mandatory in all schools and the Polish Constitution abolished. The Lithuanian language was instilled surreptitiously by the Catholic clergy and the patriotic nobility. However in 1863, retaliation came with an edict that all Lithuanian writing must be in the Cyrillic alphabet, and Catholic schools were closed, resulting in a mainly-agrarian society, much poorer than neighbouring Latvia and Estonia, but resolutely strong in the Catholic faith.

In 1919 following World War I, the three Baltic states, small countries known principally to stamp collectors, were granted independence. Freedom was short-lived. Occupation by the Germans in 1940 continued until 1944, when the USSR took possession until the fall of Communism. A freedom march from north to south of the Baltics, the Freedom Trail as it is called, established independence once again, and with joy, Lithuanians converged on the Hill of Crosses in vindication of their faith.

Year by year, the Hill of Crosses has become an even more haunting and mystical place of pilgrimage with a pervading sense of serenity, of thankfulness and humility. There is no chapel here, no formal place of worship, just thousands and thousands of crosses and rosaries in a testament of Catholic belief.

Mary Willan Mason lives in Toronto. Her most recent article was "The faith that overcame disaster. The strength of Poland." (Jan. 2004).