May I say something?
You know you say some things to everybody.
You say some things to your friends.
And you say some things to those who will stand with you.
God is way ahead of us.
Walter has his plans.
I have my plans.
Nick has his plans.
We are not close
to God's plan.
God is moving in this situation
with power
That's going to touch your life.
You're not just here
as visitors,
as participants.
You're here to partake of a vision
For the evangelization of Europe.
This is a beachhead
of what God is doing.
The reason Franciscan University is here
Is not just
because it has good academics,
it's not just because it's loyal to the Holy Father and orthodoxy.
But it's because God has given it
a spirit of evangelization
that he wants spread
throughout these countries.
I remember following very carefully
the Allies' invasion of Europe
on the Anzio beachheads.
And I remember understanding
how important it was that the Allies' troops would get on that beach,
and begin to move through Europe.
Those of you who were here through those days,
you knew this sense of hope
when the Allies' troop began to move across Europe.
You knew because they were on the continent
freedom was happening.
And I tell you here tonight:
This is a beachhead
for evangelization.
Christianity and Catholicism
for eastern Europe.
I don't know how God will use it.
I don't know how important we'll be in it.
I don't know how many other beachheads there'll be
just as there were in the invasion of Europe.
What I do tell you tonight
is it is an extremely important beginning
of evangelization.
And that out of this base
the fusion
of
academic life,
professional studies,
comprehensive, intellectual defense,
put together with evangelism,
and an evangelistic spirit,
will be fused to move through these nations.
It'll happen.
We never could have gotten to this moment without God.
It never would have happened that an architect
and a president of a little university in Ohio
would come together.
But God has put it together.
And you're here tonight to be part of it.
You really are.
And it's going to happen.
I don't know how.
I don't know how big we'll become.
I don't know whether we'll just be
the model for others to do it.
But it's going to be a
victorious move of God,
through the Catholic Church,
in the spirit of John Paul II,
in an evangelization, and with the understanding
that a clear commitment to Jesus Christ within the Catholic Church
is what will, in fact, renew and reestablish
the whole eastern European continent,
and indeed this central Europe.
Just wanted to tell you that.