ANALYSIS: Pope's liturgy in Lviv draws more than 1 million people (07/08/01)

ANALYSIS

Pope's liturgy in Lviv draws more than 1 million people

by Askold Krushelnycky
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million people turned out in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on June 27 to see the pope preside over the final liturgy of his five-day visit to Ukraine. The crowd waiting at the horse-racetrack on the outskirts of the city seemed stunned when Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma unexpectedly turned up minutes before the pope himself arrived.

On June 27, it was the turn of the Greek-Catholics. The racetrack was crowded hours before the pope arrived, and when his familiar white, high-sided popemobile arrived, the air reverberated as people chanted: "We welcome you."

Pope John Paul II was greeted by the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, who thanked the Roman Catholic Church for the support it gave Ukraine and the Greek-Catholic Church during the years of Communist persecution.

Stalin banned the Greek-Catholic Church in 1946 and many of its clergy and faithful were executed or imprisoned.

At the June 27 mass, the pope presided over the beatification of 27 people, who are regarded as martyrs because they were executed by the communists or died in prison. All except one suffered at communist hands. The exception was a priest who died in a concentration camp after being arrested by the Nazis for helping Jews in German-occupied Ukraine.

In his sermon, Pope John Paul II spoke of the conflicts and wars that have afflicted western Ukraine in the past. He recalled the words of a former leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, who spent 17 years in the Soviet gulag. Patriarch Josyf was the head of the Church from 1963 until his death in 1984.

"This Galician soil, which in the course of history saw the development of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church - in the words of the unforgettable Cardinal Josyf Slipyj - was covered by a mountain of corpses and rivers of blood," the pontiff said.

The pope began his address to the faithful by quoting from the Bible: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That statement, he said, was echoed in the sacrifices of those who were beatified.

"Martyrdom is the highest form of serving God and the Church. With this liturgy we want to glorify them [the newly beatified] and thank them for their faithfulness," the pontiff said.

The pope returned to the theme of reconciliation between different religions and peoples that he addressed several times during his five-day trip. At the June 26 Roman Catholic mass - attended by 500,000 people, including tens of thousands from neighboring Poland - the pope made an emotional appeal for historical memories not to tarnish present and future relations between Ukrainians and Poles.

On June 27, he said: "In past centuries, we have accumulated too many stereotypes, mutual insults and intolerance. The only way to free ourselves from this is to forget the past, to ask and grant forgiveness of one another for hurts done and received."

One of the pope's hopes had been to meet with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of three Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. Two of them, both independent Ukrainian Churches, met with the Pope and welcomed him warmly. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate virulently opposed the pope's trip before he came and maintained a hostile stance while he was in Ukraine, accusing him of trying to win converts to Roman Catholicism.

But the pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, announced that one member of the Russian Orthodox Church did come to the June 27 mass and was even up on the stage, close to the pope.

Father Ivan Sveridov, a Russian Orthodox priest since 1995, said he is the head of an Orthodox radio station in Moscow. He said he has met the pope eight times and developed a warm relationship with him. Father Sveridov said that he came to Lviv in a private capacity as a gesture to the pope because he felt that the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Aleksei II, had been "mistaken" and too aggressive in his remarks about the pope.

Another unexpected visitor at the mass was President Kuchma, who arrived in a car cavalcade just minutes before the pope. It was Mr. Kuchma who had issued the invitation for the pope to visit Ukraine, and he gave him a warm welcome when the pontiff arrived in the Ukrainian capital on June 23.

President Kuchma's arrival at the liturgy site at first seemed to astonish the crowd. People from western Ukraine have been in the forefront of many of the mass demonstrations against the president over the last few months, accusing him of corruption and involvement in the murder last year of an opposition journalist.

Soon after the president entered the racetrack, thousands of people started to shout "Ukraine Without Mr. Kuchma" - the slogan that was the hallmark of many demonstrations in Kyiv and elsewhere.

Before the chant was taken up by tens of thousands of voices, Cardinal Husar defused a potentially humiliating moment for the president. He announced to the crowd that the Greek-Catholic Church was grateful to Mr. Kuchma for issuing the invitation to the pope and making the tour possible.

The pope also added his praise for the president. "I am personally grateful to the president of Ukraine, President Kuchma, for his presence at this solemn liturgy," he said.

Askold Krushelnycky is an RFE/RL correspondent.

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