‘Build Common House,’ Pope Implores Youths : Europe: From East and West, 1 million young people gather to hear John Paul’s call for a Christian future.
CZESTOCHOWA, Poland — More than 1 million young people joined hands in prayer here Thursday in a powerful symbol of European unity--and in a salute to a Polish Pope imploring them to safeguard their common future on a continent where the church can now “breathe freely with both her lungs.â€
Excited pilgrims to a Catholic World Youth Day celebration, most of them teen-agers, transformed the vast esplanade before a Marian shrine here into a Gargantuan, overflowing block party. For the first time, celebrants at a midsummer fiesta with Pope John Paul II spilled in freely from both Eastern and Western Europe.
On a T-shirt-and-shorts summer day, young Poles in New York Yankees caps fried fat sausages alongside impressively badged French Boy Scouts. Italians with designer knapsacks sang in hand-clapping accompaniment to Spanish guitars. A volunteer ambulance corps from Ireland came with its uniforms--and its ambulance. Guy Senoli of Benin, unable in the crush to reach the site of the papal Mass, shared a transistor radio with a Brazilian and an Angolan playing hooky from philosophy studies in Florence.
Polish police, braced for 750,000 pilgrims, told Vatican organizers that they stopped counting when arrivals appeared to have passed 1 million. Most of the pilgrims were Poles, but others came from all corners of Europe, including about 70,000 from the Soviet Union. One group buoyantly waved a banner assuring John Paul, in Russian, that “Moscow Loves You.â€
“He’s a Pope who really cares about young people, you can tell,†said Joe Krupp of Flint, Mich., one of the relative handful of young Americans savoring the infectious enthusiasm in this shrine city of 250,000 people about 120 miles southwest of Warsaw.
High-spirited and full-throated, John Paul extended greetings in two dozen languages to cheering, flag-waving youths from an altar before the high-steepled, hillside sanctuary of the so-called Black Madonna, the holiest and most popular shrine in Poland.
Testimonials at the church ascribe more than 1,400 miracles to the fire-blackened 14th-Century painting of the Madonna and Child, and Thursday’s festival coincided with the annual holy day honoring what Roman Catholics believe was Mary’s assumption into Heaven.
In his homily from an altar high above the multitude, John Paul took note of the audience’s East Europeans:
“After the long period when borders were practically closed, the church in Europe can now breathe freely with both her lungs,†the Pope said, noting that during the Cold War, East European Catholics bore a witness “which at times required paying a high price by suffering in isolation, in persecution and in imprisonment as well.â€
“Today, at last, your hour has come,†he said, telling his listeners that Europe “is counting on you to build that ‘common house’ from which we hope for a future of solidarity and peace.â€
Public recital of the Lord’s Prayer, a fixture at every Catholic Mass, became emblematic Thursday of John Paul’s unity message.
At urgings from the altar, worshipers joined hands and raised their arms in the morning sunshine. John Paul chanted the prayer in Latin. The crowd followed him, each praying in his own language.
The Pope has long argued that with divisive ideology removed, Europe now has the chance to build a peaceful and united future built on shared Christian values.
“Much of what tomorrow will be depends on the commitment of today’s generation of Christians,†the 71-year-old pontiff lectured his rapt audience. “Yours, therefore, is the mission of ensuring in tomorrow’s world the presence of values such as full religious freedom, respect for the personalist dimension of development, the protection of the right to life, the promotion of the family, increased appreciation of the diversity existing between cultures for the sake of mutual enrichment, and the safeguarding of an ecological balance now menaced by ever-more serious threats.â€
John Paul, who dueled with Communist authorities as a priest and bishop in Poland, is seen by many of his compatriots in strongly Roman Catholic Poland as a major force in the victory of non-Communist forces that now govern the country.
He called Thursday for compassion in victory. “The collapse of ideology in the countries of Eastern Europe has left many of your friends with the feeling of a great void, the impression of having been deceived and a depressing anxiety about the future,†he said.
He urged young Catholics in the East to find common cause with their former enemies, and those in the West to spiritually assist that “great number of young people (who) have lost their reason for living,†displaying a political apathy that “betrays a sense of powerlessness in the struggle for good.â€
The Pope leaves Poland this morning to begin a five-day visit--his first--to Hungary.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
