At 97 years old, most people would be forgiven for choosing the easier path -- in fact, they'd probably be encouraged! Cardinal Ernest Simoni, however, has chosen a hill instead.
The Albanian cardinal has been filmed slowly climbing the hills of the Medjugorje shrine, rosary in hand, pausing to pray as he makes his way upwards. On the surface, it is simply a pilgrimage. Yet for anyone who knows Cardinal Simoni's extraordinary story, every step seems to carry the weight of the decades that came before it.
As a young priest, Cardinal Simoni spent 18 years imprisoned and subjected to forced labour under Albania's communist regime because he continued to live out his priestly ministry. Years that could easily have left him bitter instead became part of a remarkable witness of perseverance and forgiveness — one that deeply moved Pope Francis, who created him a cardinal in 2016.
Now, decades later, those same hands that once endured prison and hard labour gently move from bead to bead on a rosary.
For many Catholics, the Rosary becomes a faithful companion through life's hardest seasons. It is prayed in hospital waiting rooms, beside sickbeds, on long journeys, and in the quiet moments when words seem to run out. Watching Cardinal Simoni climb with those familiar beads in his hands, it is difficult not to wonder how many times that same prayer sustained him long before it accompanied him up the hills of Medjugorje.
"Verso l'Alto!"
It is perhaps a happy coincidence that, within days of one another, two very different individuals have quietly captured people's attention by choosing to climb. Catherine, Princess of Wales, still recovering from her battle with cancer, tackled Britain's Three Peaks to raise money for others facing the disease. Cardinal Simoni, who spent years imprisoned for his priestly ministry, slowly makes his way up the hills of Medjugorje with a rosary in his hands.
Neither had anything left to prove, yet both chose to keep looking upwards.
And perhaps that is what hope so often looks like. It does not pretend suffering never happened, nor does it remain trapped there. Instead, it quietly asks, "What now?" Sometimes the answer is to encourage another person, to raise money, to make a pilgrimage, to pray another decade of the Rosary, or simply to carry on putting one foot in front of the other.
At 97, Cardinal Simoni is still climbing. Not because the years have been easy, but because faith has always taught him where to fix his gaze. And it's so reassuring to see that after everything life placed in his path, his instinct is still to climb towards God. As St. Pier Giorgio Frassati would say: "Verso l'Alto!" or "To the heights!"
