Cardinal Pujats: bishop's bishop

Thomas Basil, "At Mass in Latvia" (New Oxford Review, April 2010):

Riga's basilica impressed me most, not for its 13th-century antiquity or its gleaming renovation, but for what it signals about its cardinal archbishop, Janis Pujats. Beside his cathedral's main door is a large prolife educational display, including eight photos of preborn babies in the womb. You cannot leave his cathedral without it smacking you in the face.

Cardinal Pujats was around 20 years old when the Soviet and Nazi invasions of Latvia struck. He was around age 35 when armed warfare in Latvia ended. He was around 60 when Latvia again became independent, and 70 when it voted to join the European Union. Pope John Paul II elevated him to the cardinalate in 1998. Forged under totalitarian oppression, the Cardinal seems a man utterly unfazed by postmodern progressive opinion, religious or secular.

In interviews from 2005 and 2007 posted online (here edited for brevity), Cardinal Pujats commented on a medley of topics.

On altars: "We are not hurrying to turn around the altars. When we build smaller churches, even today, I do not have the altar detached from the wall. I do not look upon it as an offense to anyone that the priest stands facing the altar to celebrate Mass."

... On confession: "In many [nations] few people go to confess their sins, but they all go to Communion. I look on this as the biggest mistake that [Vatican II] ‘reformers' have made. When they lifted the people onto their feet it was apparent to me that it would take two generations to get them back on their knees."

And most famously in 2005 on plans for Riga's first-ever gay-pride parade: "An absolute depravity. An unnatural form of prostitution. A sexual atheism more dangerous than Soviet atheism because spiritual values disappear in a swamp of sexual irregularity." In one of history's great ironies, Russia's ambassador to Latvia, Viktor Kalyuzhny, publicly thanked the Cardinal for this statement, stating on the record, "The mortality rate in Latvia exceeds the number of births. [Homosexuality] is not only a matter for the church, but that any normal individual should understand that cheating nature is impossible." Kal­yuzhny told journalists that, during his meeting with the Cardinal, "he made a deep bow to His Grace, who practically alone has clearly, openly, and directly [spoken the truth]." Note that this tribute came from a successor to rulers who only recently forcibly occupied Latvia and hated the Church. (emphasis added)