Last December I had the great good fortune to meet and talk to Archbishop Desmond Tutu for about half an hour at his office in Cape Town.  This came about due to some research I was doing in relation to finding ways to build bridges across the divide between people in conflictual situations.  Archbishop Tutu has played an outstanding role in this area not just because of his work on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but because of his untiring efforts both formal and informal to find ways to bring the Christian message into human life in all its aspects.  The members of the Commission included Moslems, Hindus, Christians of various denominations and those with no religion, but under his leadership they found a way to think and work together in the pursuit of healing and reconciliation. 

Archbishop Tutu has been called a “rabble-rouser for peace” and laughs with delight when reminded of it.  One of my most enduring memories of him is of his laugh – he laughs almost like a child, easily, gleefully and without malice.  We discussed his work and he spoke about how he had not set out to be a minister of religion in the first instance.  He wanted to be a doctor and got a place in a medical school but couldn’t go due to lack of money.  He then trained as a teacher because this was subvented by the government and on graduation spent 4 years teaching in a high school.  When Dr. Verwoerd introduced a system of education that was patently racist, both Dr. Tutu and his wife resigned from their teaching posts in protest.  It was at this stage that he decided to become a minister, because, he said, it seemed to offer the best possibility for helping his people. 

He was trained as a minister in the seminary run by the Community of the Resurrection and has never lost his respect for religious life.  He sees being a Christian as a full time occupation: “I can’t be different”, he said, “I can’t pretend I’m not a Christian”.  The spiritual dimension is what defines human and Christian life and gives it authenticity.  For him there is no escaping the fact that we are all part of “a moral universe” and have an obligation to take whatever opportunities come along to deal with what he called our “albatrosses”.

Speaking about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he said, “A lot of what we were doing was in many ways pastoral, spiritual if you like.  I mean forgiveness is not a category that operates in politics.  It operates well in religion and so yes, I think I mean the fact that an archbishop was appointed as a chair seemed to suggest that there was an understanding that you agreed to have many more of the categories, religious spiritual categories, than the legal and political”.

Underlying his approach to the human experience is a deeply felt compassion, and this is another of the enduring memories I took away with me.  Speaking about some of the horrific stories that were shared with the members of the Commission, he said hearing about awful atrocities led the hearers at times to speak of the person maybe as a monster, but while one had to agree that what they did was monstrous, even diabolical, nevertheless he maintained that “… we can’t say that that turns the person into a monster because the work of the Commission is really based on the premise that it is possible for people to change, and we used to say it is that we each one of us always retain the capacity to become saints. Otherwise we should shut up shop because we were working on the basis that in fact enemies could ultimately become friends”.

His compassion and commitment to the pursuit of forgiveness are built on his conviction that we are all, each of us, wounded – “… one thing we [i.e. the Commission] came to accept was we realised we were all wounded, and yes, ultimately that we could only be wounded healers in Nouwen’s terminology … we knew ourselves to have been damaged and it was thus a great privilege to have been asked to try to facilitate the healing of other equally damaged people”.

When the interview with Archbishop began the first thing we did, at his invitation, was pause and say the familiar prayer to the Holy Spirit – “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful …” and I was struck by how prayer can span all divides.  Thanks to the efforts of Sr. Clare Harkin, who went to endless trouble getting in touch with useful contacts,  and the hospitality of Sr. Kathy Gaylor and the Region team in St. Mary’s, Cape Town, I was privileged to meet a remarkable person.  It was an experience that I will treasure. 

Sr Catherine Gibson