Newspaper Page Text
CD O
CL CO
Vol. 81, No. 25
The *i
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Diocese of
Savannah
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Thursday, July 5, 2001
$.50 per issue
In Ukraine, pope urges all to work
for transformation of society
Kiev, Ukraine (CNS)
aying tribute to Ukrainians who endured de
cades of repression and assuring the nation’s
Orthodox majority of his respect for their faith and
fidelity, Pope John Paul II ended his long-awaited
visit to Ukraine.
Over the course of the June 23-27 visit, the 81-
year-old pope drew larger and larger crowds, a
rhythm matched by the increasingly emotional
chords he struck, especially with the young and
with the survivors of the communist suppression of
the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
An estimated 1.2 million people attended the
June 27 Divine Liturgy for the beatification of 27
Ukrainian and Ruthenian Catholic martyrs. It was
one of the largest crowds of any papal Mass in a
country of the former Soviet Union.
And even in the liturgy honoring the fidelity of
Catholics who refused to accept a communist-
ordered union with the Russian Orthodox, Pope
John Paul said all of Ukraine’s Christians suffered
under communism, and their shared experience of
martyrdom should draw them closer to unity.
He repeated the sentiments again at the Lviv air
port as he prepared to return to Rome, saying
Christians’ role in Ukrainian society has been
strengthened by “the baptism of blood which they
received in the course of the tremendous persecu
tions of the 20th century.”
“In those terrible years,” he said, “countless were
the witnesses to the faith, not only Catholics but
also Orthodox and Reformed Christians, who
underwent deprivations of all kinds for love of
Christ, in many cases even to the sacrifice of their
lives.”
As soon as he arrived in Ukraine June 23, the
pope told the Orthodox he did not want to steal
their faithful, but to overcome animosity and move
forward together to transform the society.
“I have not come here with the intention of pros
elytizing, but to bear witness to Christ together
with all Christians,” the pope said in his arrival
speech.
In his speeches, his visits to the mass graves of
the victims of the Soviets and the Nazis and his
beatification of the martyrs, the pope paid homage
to the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
Before leaving the country, he thanked all who
suffered and said, “It has been my long-standing
wish to express my admiration and appreciation
Pope John Paul II prays in front of the Babi Yar
Jewish memorial in Kiev June 25. Tens of
thousands of Ukrainian Jews were gunned
down there in 1941 during a Nazi killing spree.
for the heroic witness that you have borne during
the long winter of persecution in the past century.”
Joaquin Navarro-Vails, the pope’s spokesman,
told reporters June 24: “The pope is living a
dream. He has dreamed of this (visit) for many
years, and now he is living it.”
In Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, crowds were
mainly solemn, but arriving in Lviv June 25, the
pope rode the popemobile through five miles of
streets lined with well-wishers who cheered, cried
and held up homemade banners and standards with
religious images.
The pope celebrated Mass on muddy racetrack
grounds in Lviv June 26, beatifying two well
loved local pastors: Archbishop Jozef Bilczewski,
who headed the Lviv Archdiocese until his death
in 1923, and Father Zygmunt Gorazdowski, a
priest who spent his life helping the poor and sick.
Later that evening, meeting with 300,000 youths
in a downpour in a Lviv suburb, the pope stood
under a canopy and joked, “Let it rain, the children
will grow.”
He sang two Polish folk songs: one about the
rain going away and—after having changed his
wet white robes toward the end of the service—the
other about a peasant who wants to go home
because his feet are tired.
In Kiev, the pope had congratulated Ukrainians
on the 10 years of independence they will cele
brate in August, an independence won from the
Soviet Union without bloodshed.
He also urged the nation’s politicians, business
leaders and economists to work together to pro
mote the common good, to improve Ukraine’s eco
nomic situation and to care for the poor, who have
not benefited from the nation’s transition to a mar
ket economy.
In Kiev, a mainly Orthodox city unlike Lviv, the
•5 ongoing tension between Catholics and Orthodox
= was the subject of Pope John Paul’s strongest
“ words.
o “Bowing down before our one Lord, let us rec-
£ ognize our faults,” he said at the arrival ceremony.
</) “As we ask forgiveness for the errors committed in
o both the distant and recent past, let us in turn offer
forgiveness for the wrongs endured.”
Members of Ukraine’s largest Orthodox Church,
and the Russian Orthodox Church to which it is
allied, objected to the pope’s visit and refused to
participate in his June 24 meeting with leaders of
Ukraine’s churches and religious communities.
They claimed the Catholic Church was trying to
steal believers and that Catholics had used vio
lence to take over thousands of church buildings in
Western Ukraine. Ukrainian Catholic and Vatican
officials have said the charges are not true.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity,
said: “We want the Orthodox to remain Orthodox,
to become better Orthodox. We want to help them,
we don’t want to convert them—not at all.”
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