HISTORIC KESTON EXHIBITION OPENED BY CARDINAL BAČKIS
B-LS Honorary Life Member, Canon Michael Bourdeaux, honoured by President Adamkus

President Valdas Adamkus awarding Canon Bourdeaux the Officer’s
Cross of the Order of Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas the Great
Keston College was founded in England by Anglican priest, Canon Michael Bourdeaux, in 1969 to study the persecution of religion under communist regimes and it paid particular attention to the situation of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, becoming a major voice in the West for the persecuted Catholic Church in Lithuania. The work of Keston College was well known to Australian Lithuanians, particularly in the seventies ant the eighties, campaigning for the Lithuania’s freedom. Keston College had established Keston College (NSW) and cooperated with Tasmania’s "Friends of Prisoners" organisation. Canon Michael Bourdeaux was recently honoured in Vilnius by President Adamkus. We are grateful to Mr. Aleksas Vilčinskas, of the British-Lithuanian Society, for permission to include the following article from "Tiltas" magazine on SLIC website.
The exhibition "Keston Institute Documents - Evidence of the Persecution of Religion" was officially opened in Vilnius on 17th November 2005 by His Eminence Cardinal Audrius Bačkis, in the presence of former prisoners of conscience Fr A Svarinskas and Nijolė Sadūnaitė, Keston Institute founder Canon Michael Bourdeaux, Bishop Jonas Boruta SJ, British Ambassador to Vilnius HE Colin Roberts, Lithuanian Ambassador to London HE Aurimas Taurantas and many other distinguished guests. That same evening a number of guests were entertained by Ambassador and Mrs Roberts in their residence. Two days earlier President Valdas Adamkus had awarded Canon Bourdeaux the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas the Great in recognition of his distinguished service towards the freedom of Lithuania. The Keston Group in Vilnius also comprised Canon Bourdeaux’s wife, Lorna; the Chair of Keston and another of its founders Xenia Dennen; the Director of Keston, Dr Davorin Peterlin, and the Keston Archivist and Librarian, Malcolm Walker. Michael Peart and Aleksas Vilčinskas represented the British-Lithuanian Society (B-LS) at each occasion.
The exhibition’s antecedents were described in the August 2005 edition of Tiltas. Its aims were to demonstrate to Lithuanian society the colossal, but yet very little known, achievements of Keston Institute and Canon Michael Bordeaux, as well as the history of the Institute and its current activities.
One of the most striking items on display was a Memorandum drafted in 1972 and signed by more than 17,000 Lithuanian Catholics. The Memorandum was addressed to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev. However, in order to attract the attention of the West to the fight for religious freedom in Lithuania, it was decided to submit the Memorandum via the United Nations. Despite surveillance by the KGB and militia, this document of 125 autographed sheets was compiled, successfully reached the West and was widely publicised. The Memorandum found its way to Keston via a clandestine route and is now held in their archive. This document is of inestimable historical value and gives evidence of the public spirit and personal bravery of thousands of ordinary Lithuanian believers. Members of B-LS had been able to see this document during their visit to Keston Institute in May 2004.
Also exhibited were copies of several petitions to the Communist Party leadership, signed by Lithuanian priests complaining about repression of religious freedom. A truly remarkable exhibit was the transcript of the trial proceedings of a member of the Baptist community, A. Skripnikova, that took place in Leningrad in 1967. The transcript is on several strips of cloth, easy to roll into small bundles and hide, illustrating the diverse ways used to smuggle information across the Iron Curtain.
Another group of exhibits consisted of periodicals and books published by Keston College (now Keston Institute) in the seventies and eighties, including Canon Bourdeaux’s book "Lithuania Land of Crosses: The struggle for religious freedom in Lithuania, 1939-1978", publicising the dire situation of the Church in Lithuania. Photographs and posters from exhibitions organised by Keston College also gave visitors a good understanding of the nature of this organisation’s activities and its significance to Lithuania.
Documents and other material from the Lithuanian Museum of Genocide Victims supplemented the exhibits from Keston. These reflected the manifestation of the believers’ rights movement in Lithuania, as well as by originals of "Lietuvos katalikų bažnyčios kronika (The Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church)". The ten volume set of the latter underground publication, reprinted by the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States, and its translations into many foreign languages were also on display, as well as abundant literature from the National Library collection reflecting the persecution of the Church in Lithuania and neighbouring countries. Yet another unique item was from the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre archive: a petition by the believers of Klaipėda requesting the return of their parish church, which had been confiscated by the Communist authorities and converted into a concert hall. The petition is in the form of a book some two inches thick, bound between poker-worked plywood covers.
The exhibits were attractively displayed in the main exhibition hall of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library, which is immediately adjacent to the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament building. The National Library also published a beautifully designed brochure describing the achievements of Canon Bourdeaux, the work of Keston Institute, and highlighting some of the exhibits on display.
Exhibition Patrons were the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference and the Organisers: Keston Institute, B-LS, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania and the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. Sponsors were the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, British Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuanian Embassy in London, Lithuanian Association in Great Britain, Sir Sigmund Sternberg, Neil Taylor, Margo Maxwell Macdonald (The Westerly Trust) and the B-LS. As initiator and project manager of the exhibition, B-LS wishes to thank all those who contributed to its success, and particularly to Vytautas Gudaitis, Director of the National Library, and his talented staff for designing such a visually stunning display.


Aleksas Vilčinskas, Secretary
British-Lithuanian Society

With acknowledgments to Dr Arūnas Streikus of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre, Silvija Vėlavicienė and Birutė Pečiulevičiutė of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library for their permission to reprint extracts from the exhibition brochure.