- Title: BULGARIA: POPE JOHN PAUL II ARRIVES FOR FOUR DAY VISIT
- Date: 25th May 2002
- Summary: (W6)SOFIA, BULGARIA (MAY 23, 2002) (REUTERS) 1. SLV AZERBAIJAN AIRLINES PLANE TAXIING ON TARMAC AT AIRPORT; PEOPLE WAITING ON TARMAC (3 SHOTS) 0.29 2. SLV POPE JOHN PAUL EMERGING FROM PLANE; GUARD OF HONOUR ON TARMAC (2 SHOTS) 0.46 3. SLV POPE CARRIED ON A MOBILE PLATFORM ACROSS A RED CARPET; POPE RECEIVING A GIFT FROM BULGARIAN CHILDREN; SLV POPE CARRIED ON MOBILE PLATFORM TO A CAR, WAVING TO CROWD; POPE'S CONVOY DRIVING AWAY (6 SHOTS) 2.11 4. SLV POPE'S CONVOY ARRIVING AT THE ALEXANDER NEVSKI SQUARE IN SOFIA (2 SHOTS) 2.29 5. SLV POPE GETTING OUT OF CAR, GREETED BY BULGARIAN PRESIDENT GEORGI PARVANOV 2.48 6. SLV CROWD GATHERED TO SEE POPE 2.52 7. SLV POPE WALKING TO A CHAIR AS BAND PLAYING; POPE WATCHING A CEREMONY IN HIS HONOUR; WIDE OF THE SQUARE WHERE CEREMONY IS HELD (5 SHOTS) 3.45 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 9th June 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: SOFIA, BULGARIA
- Country: Bulgaria
- Reuters ID: LVAAGOEU2DWRK425VLLIJIHLLBIQ
- Story Text: Pope John Paul has arrived for a four-day visit
long-awaited by the largely Orthodox country's Catholic
minority and by politicians hoping the event will boost the
national image.
The 82-year-old Pope, who has looked ever more frail
recently, left his plane in a cargo lift just as he did on
arrival in Azerbaijan on Wednesday (May 22, 2002) on the first
leg of the 96th trip of his lengthy pontificate.
He required no such mechanical help on previous journeys.
During his 24 hours in the Caucasus country, the Pope
moved with difficulty, frequently having to be helped forward
by aides or shuffled towards his chair on a movable platform.
Despite his evident frailty, the Polish-born Pontiff
signalled on arriving in Baku that he intended to remain the
leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics and would
not resign, as some top Church leaders have suggested.
The Pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, now
struggles with talking and breathing and is a shadow of the
man he was when he graduated from Polish cardinal to the papal
throne nearly 24 years ago.
Several days of meetings with politicians, church leaders
and dignitaries and a large open-air mass on Sunday in
Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second city and the heartland of the
Catholic minority, will be a severe test of his strength.
Ex-communist Bulgaria hopes the trip will raise its
standing in the West, shifting attention away from its
continuing poverty and boosting its top foreign policy goal of
persuading NATO to give it an entry invitation this year.
The Pope leaves Bulgaria on Sunday evening.
Bulgaria has only 80,000 Catholics, one percent of the
eight million population. They suffered harsh persecution
during four decades of communism, with several of their
leaders executed, and they have long sought a visit by their
spiritual leader.
Orthodox Church leaders, who claim the allegiance of 80
percent of Bulgarians, have accepted the papal trip but with
little enthusiasm.
The Pope received an official greeting in central Sofia
from Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, a communist turned
social democrat, at a ceremony which Orthodox church leader
Patriarch Maxim only decided at the last minute to attend.
The Pope, who first visited an Orthodox country in 1999
when he travelled to Romania, is likely to use his Bulgarian
trip to renew his call for a reunification of Christianity's
eastern and western Churches, which split in 1054.
The Pope has not yet fulfilled his dream of visiting
Russia due to the opposition of the Russian Orthodox Church,
which accuses the Catholic church of poaching its believers.
As well as meeting Patriarch Maxim on Friday, the Pope
will also meet leaders of the one million Bulgarian Muslims
and the country's tiny Jewish community, numbering 7-8,000,
some of whom worship at the world's largest Sephardic
synagogue in Sofia.
Bulgarians have been curious rather than ecstatic over the
trip and few lined up to see him in downtown Sofia. Many were
deterred by the intense security cordon and by warnings they
would have to wait two hours to glimpse the Pope.
Only around 2,000 people gathered in front of St Alexander
Nevsky cathedral in central Sofia to watch the arrival
ceremony. The gold-topped cathedral was built to honour
Russian help in the war of liberation against the Ottomans
in 1878.
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