“Jesus evangelises from the cross, and the first one who realises it is one of his companions in misfortune, who perhaps first looked at him out of curiosity, then with increasing interest”. In his Good Friday sermon, cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa and president of CEI, the Italian Bishops Conference, speaks of the “good thief” crucified with Jesus, who, by looking at Him, realised that “there’s not just violence, the survival of the strongest”, because “that condemned man was imbued with a humanity that he would have wanted to be his and that now – at the end of his days – was coming to him, at last. He was discovering a new kind of a man, one who does not play with relationships of cunning and abuse, but who lives life – all life, even death – at peace, without hatred. Yes, at last he knew that there is a different world, a nice, attractive way of being human, that might be mocked and crushed by common opinion, by the envy and dumbness of the world, but that was still the only true, good, happy one”. “However – the cardinal went on – it not just honesty, the freedom of truth, the choice of goodness that comes up in that man, but, by looking at the way Jesus is suffering and the way He entrusts Himself to God, he takes that final step that is trusting, which leads to praying”. “Next to Jesus and through Jesus – the archbishop ended –, the thief redeems a sad, meaningless life: he redeems it, because he has seen that one can trust, that goodness exists, that innocence triumphs even when it is defeated; he has seen that God is the last word on human facts”.