Thank you President Smith, members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty, my fellow honorees, the Dominicans, and all of Providence College. It is indeed a great honor to receive this degree and to share in this commencement with the Class of 2003.

Congratulations to all of you!

And now let's take a moment to thank the parents. I see tears welling in the eyes of so many parents. So let's not forget they are struggling on a day like this. That is, struggling with the idea of you students returning home this summer.

I feel very much like I'm returning home here at Providence College. My first memory of this place was when I was about 9 years old driving in the family station wagon to drop my older brother, Rick, off for his freshman year. It was the early 1970s when the talk of Providence was of a different war, Vietnam, and of a legendary Friar's pointguard named Ernie DiGregorio. Later on when I was in college, I had a big group of friends from my hometown who attended PC and I ended up here on quite a few weekends. I remember the parties on the porches of the triple-deckers on Anderson Street and, of course, Louie's' - an institution then and now.

So I know a few of the secrets of this place. And that has actually made some of your esteemed alumnae who are friends and relatives a bit nervous about what I might say in this speech. But I've been sworn to secrecy. In the true spirit of Irish Catholic guilt all I can say is, "You know what you've done."

Along these touchstones with Providence I have felt something unique on this campus, something you should all be very proud of. That is a sense of spirituality - not one that is sappy or preachy, but grounded and true. It emanates from the college's history and its commitment to offering an education built with academic rigor, but resting on a foundation of faith.

This is a Catholic institution. You, the students, are predominantly Catholic. Some of you are devout, some not. Some are not Catholic at all, but Protestant, or Baptist or Lutheran. Others are Jewish or Muslim. You come from many different backgrounds. In this sense, this college is truly catholic - the catholic with the small "c" - which Webster's defines as "universal" or "all embracing." Whatever your background, this education grounded in faith is something that will set you apart from many of your peers out there in the world. It is Providence College's gift to you.

I have seen this gift in my friends and family who have been lucky enough to come here. I see it in my friend, Joe Lagan, Class of 1984, who has been my spiritual counselor since Little League. And I've seen it in my cousin, Chris Gorgone, who is graduating today. I can see this gift of faith out here -- in all the radiant, young faces in this crowd.

Your four years here have come at a cross road's in history. You are part of a generation forged in the fires of 9-11, tempered by the realization that America will never be the same again.  During your time here, this country has fought two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq - and more than 50 alumnae of this college risked their lives defending this country against a new and faceless enemy. One of them, Brian McPhillips, Class of 2000, a first lieutenant with the US Marine Corps, was killed in action in central Iraq. We remember him today. We thank him for his service.

So you are setting out in a new world of peril - but also full of possibility. It is a world that needs this Class of 2003, it needs your talent, your intelligence, your energy, your compassion and, most of all, I would argue - your gift of faith. This new age of uncertainty will require something of you. It will require that you know about the world around you, a vigilance guided by not only by your academic degree, but that grounding in faith.
I want to focus today on a subject that is at the core of the Christian faith and that is a central belief in all faiths. It is a subject that hasn't received much attention even at this moment in our history when religious struggle - "the clash of civilizations" as some would call it - is shaping the current debate. It is a word not given much consideration in all the politicians' talk of "good" and "evil" in the war on terrorism. It is a word we didn't hear in President Bush's speeches calling for war in Iraq or at Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon briefings. It is a word that is not part of the lingua franca of diplomats at the United Nations.  It's a word that most journalists would scoff at as simplistic and ultimately irrelevant.

The word is forgiveness.

Now, you might ask, what could a journalist possibly have to say about forgiveness? After all, our profession is among the most judgmental and unforgiving in the world. What could a war reporter possibly tell you about forgiveness as a path to reconciliation? After all isn't it "the media" that is always rushing to hotspots and in the end doing little more than stirring up the violence? Doesn't the media on some level even profit off the violence with increased circulation and higher TV ratings?

My answer would be to borrow a line from my father-in-law. He was an old school newsman from New York City who wore his press card in his fedora, and when he crossed a police line he was known to say, "Forgive us our press passes."

I am not, I would have to admit, a devout Catholic. But I grew up in what I guess you would call a traditional Irish Catholic family. My mother, Ginny, who is also here today, was mad when in the first printing of my book I described myself as a lapsed Catholic. I told her I was just trying to be honest. She said, "You might be lax, but you're not lapsed." By the second printing, it was corrected. My faith is inescapably a big part of who I am as a person, as a husband, as a father, and as a writer.

From Christmas 1999 to Easter 2001 I set out on what I called a "wayward Catholic's journalistic pilgrimage." I retraced the path of Jesus' life from Bethlehem to Egypt and Nazareth and Jordan and Jerusalem.

Along the ancient Roman paving stones, I found that the themes that resonated 2,000 years ago at the time of Jesus' life -- military occupation, religious extremism, economic injustice, the quest to control Jerusalem - were the same issues that divided people today. I arrived at a simple, but profound truth. The message that Jesus preached in the land he called home - a theology centered on forgiveness even of ones enemies - is as challenging and as radical today as it was back then. I explored whether the theology of forgiveness - perhaps even "the politics of forgiveness" - might be a way out of the so-called "cycle of violence" in the Middle East.

But to live in the Holy Land is to understand that Christendom has not cornered the market on forgiveness. Not in a land where Muslims and Jews endured the Crusades. Not in Israel which emerged out of the ashes of the Holocaust. The painful history of the land brought me to an exploration of Judaism and Islam's own beautiful -  but very different - messages of forgiveness and reconciliation. As they teach us, forgiveness can't mean forgetting, and it means nothing without repentance. Judaism and Islam are more clear, and more practical in that regard, and there is a lot that Christians can learn from their approach - and sometimes their wariness of the limits of forgiveness.

There is a lot we can learn from each other.

The life of Pope John Paul II - the most traveled pope in history - has focused on bringing Jesus' message of forgiveness all over the world. And at the turn of the millennium, the pope reflected on the history of Catholicism and its own need to seek forgiveness.

I heard Bishop Desmond Tutu speak in Jerusalem and challenge Israelis and Palestinians to follow the path of South Africa in seeking to end the bloodshed there through a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" like the one that Tutu headed. To quote Bishop Tutu, "Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea that one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without forgiveness there is no future."

The concept of forgiveness in a political context has quietly appeared in some of the world's most intractable conflicts, helping the opposing sides navigate a new future together. In Northern Ireland, in South Korea, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia people have, through forgiveness, sought to reconcile generations of ethnic and religious hatreds.

I am not a theologian. I am a foreign correspondent. What I do is tell stories, hopefully stories ones that can enlighten. In this vocation, you are given a front row seat on history, and I'd like to share two recent and very personal scenes from those box seats.

The first took place in Afghanistan. I was among the first reporters into the country after 9-11. Like everyone else, I was reeling from what had happened. In that tree of grief that seemed to branch out all over the country, my wife and I lost a dear friend. A neighbor of ours from Charlestown was on American Airlines Flight 11. Her name was Neilie Casey, a beautiful young woman with a smile as warm as a sunrise. But before the funeral even took place, I was on the frontlines. We forged the Amru Daya river on horseback and came up onto a dusty ridge. From the trenches, we could see the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces about 800 yards away.

Vague shapes moving in the dust. The enemy. A Northern Alliance soldier offered me his Russian sniper's rifle because it had a high-powered scope through which I could see more clearly. I raised the rifle and there they were - Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters - right there in the cross hairs. The rifle was fully loaded. The safety was off. I suddenly thought about Neilie and about the enormity of the crime that took her life. And in this moment, I recognized the ease of revenge, "the dark pleasure" as one theologian has described it.

I could feel my finger tighten on the trigger - just for a moment. I didn't shoot. Of course, I didn't shoot. First of all, I am sure I wouldn't be very good at it. Second, it is not what journalists do. I am not a fighter. I handed the rifle back to the Northern Alliance soldier who asked me - teasingly, suppressing a laugh - "Why you are not shooting, Mr. Charles?"

In the aftermath of 9-11, America has to ask itself questions now about what is justice and what is revenge. How do we ever relinquish our hold on the justifiable anger at seeing our country attacked in such a cowardly and wicked way as to kill 3,000 civilians on a beautiful September morning? Or more recently in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and who knows where next?  There are moments in war - even for the journalists there - that these questions are dramatically framed, questions that go to the core of our faith, and the core of who we are as individuals and as a country.

For me, one of those scenes unfolded just a few weeks ago in northern Iraq. I was there covering the war for the Globe and working alongside my brother Rick. He never did graduate from Providence, but he turned out okay. He's a very talented photojournalist.

It was April 10, the day the city of Kirkuk was liberated. Rick and I had a carefully designed plan for covering it on our own. Like all plans in war, it fell apart in the chaos of pushing past the collapsing frontlines. We were separated in the confusion. We didn't know it, but we were both drawn to the same spot - the smoke and flames of an oil well fire in the vast oil fields that made Kirkuk one of the biggest prizes of the war. The draw was kind of a primitive journalistic response, like moths to a flame.

Rick got there first, ahead of the US Special Forces. The Iraqi army was surrendering all around us and the allied Kurdish fighters were moving in. But a ragtag group of Arab volunteer fighters known as the Fedayeen were intent on a last battle. In a warped interpretation of Islam, they had been promised paradise if they died fighting American "infidels," which in this case apparently included unarmed journalists. Rick was caught in a harrowing moment.

Two Fedayeen fighters were stalking him. One of them raised a Kalashnikov machine gun and was shot by the Kurdish forces. Another fighter - holding the pin of a grenade in his mouth and another grenade in his left hand - charged at Rick. He ran for his life and narrowly escaped. He was badly shaken. The man holding the grenades was killed as Rick sped away. The other fighter was left for dead.

But on this road was an intersection of fate. I was traveling down it about one half hour after Rick had fled and found the Fedayeen soldier dying on the road. As our driver pulled over, we saw Kurdish soldiers kicking the man in the head. It was brutal even within the brutality of war. The fighter was disarmed, had a wound to his chest, and needed medical attention. I was with two other colleagues and we asked the Kurdish soldiers to take the man to the hospital. They looked at us angrily and said, "Fedayeen. They tried to kill Americans!"

We insisted that the man be taken to hospital. The last image I have was of him being bundled into the trunk of a beat-up, old car and driving away. We later learned that he lived. I didn't know that the man whose life I was trying to save had just tried to kill my brother. It was only a few days after the event that Rick and I had time to go over the story and his photographs and for us to put it all together. So would I have tried to save him if I had known just moments before he was trying to kill my brother? Would I ever be able to forgive this dying man if he had killed my brother?

I don't know the answers to those questions. There is no hypothetical in something as wrenchingly difficult as forgiveness. But I have seen remarkable scenes of forgiveness in a land as seemingly unforgiving as the Middle East. Myrna Bethke, a pastor, whose brother was killed at the World Trade Center on 9-11, traveled all the way to Kabul and has described forgiveness of the perpetrators as lifting an enormous weight from her. "You are free to live again," she said.

If we as a country want to move beyond the agony of 9-11, we could learn a lot from Myrna. We need to seek justice - and crimes should have consequences - but we also need to ask questions of the spirit. I don't think the language of global politics, or counter-terrorism, or even military might will get us beyond 9-11.
In the context of Iraq, should we ask forgiveness for the years of support we gave to Saddam Hussein's regime in the late 1980s, or how we looked the other way when Saddam carried out a chemical attack on his own people because back then he was a de-facto ally in the Iran-Iraq war.

I think, if we could bring a dimension of forgiveness into our approach to the Middle East, it could be an opening. As a priest once told me just "to want to forgive" is a great beginning.

We humans have never been that good at forgiveness. Wiser thinkers have suggested it might be easier for us if we begin by seeking forgiveness on the small, day-to-day level and then maybe the spirit will carry on to the bigger questions of war and peace.

So parents, be forgiving when these kids come home this summer and turn the house upside down.

Students, try to be forgiving if your parents don't quite handle it well when you stay out until dawn.

Families - when you gather for celebratory dinners tonight - be forgiving if the waitress doesn't deliver the food on time. Of course, it's harder to forgive the bartender if he's slow, but try.

I know I seek forgiveness from my wife for leaving her home with four boys under the age of six while I go off to cover these wars - or give speeches about them.

And I have to ask you - Class of 2003 - for forgiveness for going on far too long.

I'll end with a quote from Robert Frost from his poem "The Star-Splitter:" "Forgiveness is not a denial of human responsibility; rather it rests on the moral judgment that an act was wrong. Forgiveness is compatible with justice, never with vengeance."

Keep the faith.
And Godspeed to all of you.

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