Pavel Ferko, nicknamed Palko, died on the 31 March last, the Wednesday of Holy Week, at the age of 83. He was one of the first witnesses of the ideal of unity in Slovakia. While still quite young he felt the vocation to become a Jesuit; some years later, due to a series of painful circumstances linked to the ruling communist regime, Palko understood that his path was to form a family. He stood out at university: he was tall and thin, always fit, he played chess very well, he played the violin and was one of the few who spoke German, French, Polish, Italian, Russian and Latin.

It wasn’t easy for someone like him to live in the then Communist Czechoslovakia, as he himself recalls: ‘I was in a delicate position. The secret police always kept an eye on me. I had been a Jesuit. That in itself was enough …’

Palko qualified in Physics after many ups and downs including forced labour due to his open opposition to the regime. He met Monika in 1964 and they married two months later. Three sons and one daughter, a united family strengthened by difficulties. He met the Focolare Movement in East Germany through Natalia Dallapiccola, Chiara Lubich’s first companion, and other Focolarini doctors: ‘The Focolare spirituality was like a seed falling on prepared ground. The principle of ‘making yourself one’ with others meant being ready to loose your own ideas in order to love and to welcome the other. This deepened my relationship with Monika, which was not only based on a promise we had made, but on the aspiration of responding to what God wanted from a family.’

Palko and Monika became a reference point for the community of the Movement in their country, and also Lithuania and the DDR which they visited from time to time. It was a very intense period for them. Just a few years after he retired he lost his wife: Monika died in a car accident and together with his children the first act of concrete love they decide to do for their mother was to forgive the driver of the car. At the end of 2009 there were signs that an illness he had for 10 years was getting worse. Palko’s comment to someone who went to visit him was: ‘St Ignatius of Loyola says that illness is no lesser a gift than health.’ On Palm Sunday 2010, three days before he died, Palko received a letter from Maria Voce, President of the Focolare Movement, reminding him that God loves him immensely! Palko said: ‘This is the word that opened my eyes and was a light for my steps. At the end of your life all your memories of the past come alive again, as though everything is concentrated and clarified. This is something marvellous. You realise in the end that you just have to trust, because He always gives us what is best.’

The great adventure of Paolo Ferko, one of the first members of the Focolare in Slovakia.