The ‘enemy’ is an opportunity for salvation, Vatican newspaper director writes in editorial
January 03, 2026
In a front-page editorial in yesterday’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper’s director wrote that other people, sometimes perceived as our enemies, may be “our only possible opportunity for salvation, perhaps the last one left.”
Andrea Monda wrote that the two faces of the Roman god Janus remind one of Christian gratitude and hope, which have been replaced in the West, particularly in Europe, by weariness and distrust. “The euphoria shouted and displayed on television channels amidst popping champagne corks and exploding fireworks seems to be artificial, tinsel to conceal a fundamental sadness, an ultimately cynical view of the world and of times considered mostly bad and meaningless.”
“Something has broken down in the ‘maintenance”‘ of relationships, a handcrafted work mostly made of patience and listening,” Monda continued. “For decades we have heard that we in the West live in a consumerist and individualistic society, and in recent years another heavy adjective has been added: narcissistic.”
“Jesus overturns the table, reverses our old and rigid schemes, and tells us that service, not power, is the path to happiness,” he added. “‘You’ must take the place of ‘I.’“
Recalling Jean-Paul Sartre‘s statement that “hell is other people,” Monda said that a good new year’s resolution is to “try to say that ‘paradise is other people.’“ Referring to J.R.R. Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings, Monda concluded:
Or, with the same honesty as the French philosopher, to repeat what a character in the most widely read novel of the 20th century says: “In that despair, my enemy was my only hope.” Others, those who would be hell, arrive menacingly knocking at the doors of our lazy tranquility and instinctively appear to us as enemies, but if we try to broaden our horizon, which is ultimately our heart, we might perhaps grasp (and welcome) that this unexpected and disorderly intrusion, which generates profound unease, is our only possible (much more than probable) opportunity for salvation, perhaps the last one left.
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