POLAND: POPE JOHN PAUL HOLDS AN OPEN-AIR MASS FOR SOME 250,000 PEOPLE IN NORTHERN POLAND
Record ID:
646445
POLAND: POPE JOHN PAUL HOLDS AN OPEN-AIR MASS FOR SOME 250,000 PEOPLE IN NORTHERN POLAND
- Title: POLAND: POPE JOHN PAUL HOLDS AN OPEN-AIR MASS FOR SOME 250,000 PEOPLE IN NORTHERN POLAND
- Date: 6th June 1999
- Summary: PELPLIN, POLAND (JUNE 6, 1999) (REUTERS(A) - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV OF PAPAL HELICOPTER ARRIVING IN POLISH COUNTRYSIDE 0.06 2. SV OF COCKPIT 0.11 3. AERIAL OF CROWDS 0.19 4. LV OF POPE GETTING OFF HELICOPTER AND BEING GREETED (2 SHOTS) 0.37 5. SLV CROWDS ALONG ROAD 0.42 6. SLV/SV PAPAL MOTORCADE DRIVING TO SITE (2 SHOTS) 0.58 7. TRACKING SHOT CROWDS WAVING ALONG SIDE OF ROAD 1.06 8. SV POPEMOBILE PASSING 1.13 9. SLV/LV PRIESTS AND POPE ARRIVES AT MASS (4 SHOTS) 1.52 10. SV POPE AT ALTAR, BLESSING PEOPLE 2.01 11. SV/CU PEOPLE LISTENING (3 SHOTS) 2.15 12. SV PRIESTS AND NUNS SINGING 2.19 13. MCU POPE AT ALTAR 2.46 14. SLV/LV CROWD (2 SHOTS) 2.54 15. MCU/SLV POPE ADDRESS (2 SHOTS) 3.19 16. LV/GV OF ALTAR AND CROWDS (2 SHOTS) 3.32 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 21st June 1999 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: PELPLIN, POLAND
- Country: Poland
- Reuters ID: LVAAFDIJGHTX1VY1ZNPT49LLI59H
- Story Text: Pope John Paul has held an open-air mass for some
250,000 people in northern Poland.
The Pope made an appeal for his Polish countryfolk to
build their lives on the bedrock of Christianity during the
homily of the open-air mass, held on a dusty rise known as
"bishop's hill" outside this historic city in northern Poland
on Sunday
(June 6).
On the second day of his 13-day nostalgic pilgrimage home,
the Pope acknowledged the cheers of the crowd and spoke
strongly.
"The Pope's in great shape and in fine spirits.He's very
happy to be home," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin
Navarro-Valls.
It being Sunday, the Pope used a mostly religious sermon
to appeal for respect for traditional values in his largely
Roman Catholic country, which enters the third millennium as a
nation transformed since he left to begin his Pontificate in
1978.
"Build on rock the house of your personal and social
life," the Pope said."And the rock is Christ, Christ living
in his Church."
As Poland has made breakneck economic and political
progress from a police state to a free-market democracy, the
Polish Catholic church has expressed concern over growing
materialism and looser social values, especially among the
young.
In recent years the Church, although not as powerful as
when it led Poles in the struggle against communism, has used
its political influence to tighten abortion laws, restrict
access to contraception and limit sex education in schools.
The Pope, who sees himself as a special guardian of his
country's moral destiny even from far away in the Vatican,
said he was worried Poles would stray from tradition.
While in Western countries, the Pope has often appealed to
Catholics not to "pick and choose" what they wanted to
believe.
By making the same appeal in Poland, the Pope appeared to
underscore his concern that economic progress, pluralism and a
thriving economy might undermine core Christian values that
kept the nation united in darker years.
Many people in the crowd had travelled hundreds of miles
(km) to see the Pope.
Many Poles see the Pope as a messiah who helped save the
country from communist repression by his uncompromising
support in the 1980s for the Solidarity union, the Soviet
bloc's first free trade union.
The church-backed Solidarity movement forced the
authorities to allow partly free elections in 1989.The
opposition victory forced Communists to accept their grip on
the country had gone.
The Pope also paid tribute to Polish priests and religious
teachers killed by Nazi Germans in the Pelplin area shortly
after the start of the World War Two in 1939.
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