"…religion frees people from the worship of secular values and authoritarian state power. I know this from experience. I lived half my life under a communist dictatorship in . My own uncle was killed by the secret police. The regime sought to crush both historic and new religions through many forms of coercion. But it [had] ultimately collapsed, peacefully, in 1989. In Slovakia, the main force behind the peaceful resistance and the fight for freedom was the Christian community—especially the Catholic Church."