- Title: UKRAINE: TEN OF THOUSANDS TAKE PART IN A PROCESSION IN LVOV TO HONOUR THE POPE
- Date: 7th April 2005
- Summary: (BN17) LVIV, UKRAINE (APRIL 7, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. LV TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WALKING THROUGH STREET 0.06 2. SV POLICE CAR DRIVING IN FRONT OF MARCH 0.10 3. SV PRIESTS CARRYING RELIGIOUS BANNERS 0.15 4. SV PEOPLE WALKING IN PROCESSION 0.24 5. SV POLICE BLOCKING TRAFFIC FOR MARCH 0.30 6. SV PEOPLE WALKING THROUGH STREET 0.36 7. SV YELLOW WHITE VATICAN FLAG WITH BLACK RIBBON HANGING ON BUILDING 0.42 8. SV PEOPLE STANDING OUTSIDE CHURCH 0.48 9. LV PEOPLE STANDING 0.56 10. SLV/SV OF PEOPLE WALKING THROUGH TOWN, CARRYING RELIGIOUS BANNERS AND PAINTINGS (2 SHOTS) 1.16 11. SV WOMAN WITH CANDLE STANDING ON MAIN SQUARE 1.23 12. CU CANDLE 1.28 13. CU PICTURE OF POPE 1.35 14. CU PEOPLE LIGHTING CANDLES 1.44 15. SV PEOPLE WALKING AND CARRYING PICTURE OF POPE 1.50 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 22nd April 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LVIV, UKRAINE
- Country: Ukraine
- Reuters ID: LVA6EB3S1B5NILCGQE63DLEK5SK
- Story Text: Tens of thousands took part in a procession in Lviv
to honor the Pope.
In western Ukraine's Catholic heartland, tens of
thousands of people on Thursday (April 7, 2005) took part in a
procession along the churches once visited by late Pope
John Paul.
The death of the Pope has sparked an outpour of
emotions among Ukraine's 5 million Catholics, especially in
Lviv a town close to the Polish border.
Traffic came to standstill as some twenty thousands
people followed the route the pope took when he visited
Lviv in the summer of 2001.
Pope John Paul II visited Ukraine in 2001 in an effort
to heal some of the long-standing religious wounds between
the Orthodox and Catholic church. During his five-day visit
he received a rapturous welcome from hundreds of thousands
of Catholics in Lviv where he gave an open-air mass. Lviv
is only 70 km (40 miles) away from the pope's homeland
Poland.
Ukraine's Catholics are grateful to Pope John Paul for
restoring religious freedom in the ex-Soviet state and
re-establishing the church after nearly five decades of
religious persecution under Communism.
In 1946, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin suppressed the
Eastern Rite Catholic Church, known as the Greek Catholic
Church, and gave its property, including churches, to the
local Orthodox Church, which was run from Moscow and was
pro-government.
For five dark decades they were forced to worship
underground or pass themselves off as Russian Orthodox. The
lid came off when Mikhail Gorbachev declared freedom of
religion in the Soviet bloc and the ban was lifted in 1991
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the ban was
lifted in 1991, Catholics took back their churches, leading
to sometimes violent disputes that occasionally pitted
elderly believers against each other. While religious
tensions in many former Soviet countries have eased in the
past dozen years, they are rife in Ukraine, where Western
and Eastern Christianity mix, clash, and sometimes explode.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who is in Rome
to attend Friday's funeral of Pope John Paul II, has
declared April 8 to be an official day of mourning in
Ukraine and has ordered national flags to fly at half-mast
throughout the country on that day.
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