In 1986, two young people, one from Sarajevo and the other from Mostar, hitchhiked their way to Taizé. At the end of July this year (2007), 180 young people from Bosnia-Herzegovina spent a week at Taizé. For more than twenty years, young people from this hard hit country have taken part in meetings each year, either at Taizé or in European cities. This year, they came from various towns: Sarajevo, Livno, Kiseljak, Banja Luka, Ljubuski … and, above all, from Mostar.

The Bishop of Mostar wrote a letter to the young people of his Diocese who were leaving for Taizé. In it he said, amongst other things: “This is the tenth time that young Catholics from Herzegovina are to join thousands of young people who, with the ecumenical monastic community of Taizé, live - in a truly Christian and therefore also authentically ecumenical way – the suffering, dead, and risen Christ. (…) During these last ten years, about a thousand young people from Herzegovina, mostly from Mostar, have taken part in these prayer meetings, some on several occasions. The organisers always remind people that the meetings are not just an opportunity to find rest for one’s soul and body, but also a chance to meet Christians from other places. The community that Brother Roger founded in 1940 has kept, to this day, the spiritual freshness and the Christian ‘Springtime’ of its early days. At Taizé, Christian unity is sought and lived as a gift of Jesus, asked for through the prayer of a simple heart: kneeling; with a sincere soul; meditating upon, and putting into practice, what Jesus taught and did.”