Virgil Elizondo is a Mexican-American Roman Catholic priest who teachers at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. In Forgiving the Unforgivable, Dr. David Stoops relates an experience Father Elizondo had while visiting a monument in Paris, France. The monument was dedicated to the memory of deported French people who had died in German concentration camps, sent there by Nazi collaborator Pierre Laval, Time Magazine’s 1931 Man of the Year.
At first Father Elizondo was horrified by the inscription over the main door, which read: “Let us forgive, but never let us forget.”
Father Elizondo then continues: “All of a sudden I realized that the real virtue came in forgiving precisely while remembering. If I could forget, I would not have to forgive. It would not even be necessary.”
