CROATIA: POPE JOHN PAUL BEATIFIES SISTER MARIJA PETKOVIC IN A CEREMONY IN DUBROVNIK
Record ID:
647913
CROATIA: POPE JOHN PAUL BEATIFIES SISTER MARIJA PETKOVIC IN A CEREMONY IN DUBROVNIK
- Title: CROATIA: POPE JOHN PAUL BEATIFIES SISTER MARIJA PETKOVIC IN A CEREMONY IN DUBROVNIK
- Date: 6th June 2003
- Summary: (U4) DUBROVNIK, CROATIA (JUNE 6, 2003) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV PEOPLE GATHERED IN GRUZ PORT WAITING FOR POPE JOHN PAUL TO ARRIVE FROM AIRPORT 0.06 2. SV "POPEMOBILE" ARRIVING, POPE JOHN PAUL GREETING PEOPLE, WAVING 0.23 3. LV PEOPLE WAVING, GREETING POPE JOHN PAUL, APPLAUDING AS POPEMOBILE DRIVING THROUGH CROWD 0.29 4. TV OF POPEMOBILE DRIVING ALONG EMBANKMENT 0.36 5. PAN OF CROWD 0.43 6. LV/SV OF POPE JOHN PAUL ON STAGE, WAVING (4 SHOTS) 1.10 7. CU OF PEOPLE APPLAUDING 1.16 8. LV POPE JOHN PAUL SITTING DOWN 1.25 9. GV OF STAGE, PEOPLE APPLAUDING 1.28 10. SLV POPE SEATED ON STAGE 1.34 11. SLV CROWD WAVING 1.39 12. MCU NUN APPLAUDING 1.44 13. SV (Croatian) POPE JOHN PAUL SAYING: "I thank God especially for giving us Marija Petkovic, (AUDIO OF APPLAUSE) 1.55 14. CU MAN HOLDING PHOTOGRAPH OF MARIJA PETKOVIC 1.59 15. SV (Croatian) POPE JOHN PAUL SAYING: "A woman of courageous and untiring love who will today be beatified." 2.16 16. LV PICTURE OF MARIJA PETKOVIC BEING UNCOVERED 2.22 17. GV/LV PEOPLE ON BOATS IN HARBOUR ATTENDING MASS/PEOPLE WAVING FROM BOATS (3 SHOTS) 2.39 18. SLV GROUP OF PEOPLE HOLDING POSTER OF MARIJA PETKOVIC WITH SIGN READING - GREETINGS FROM CHILE 2.45 19. MCU (English) MARCELLA, YOUNG WOMAN FROM CHILE SAYING: "Pope visited Chile very long time ago, but I was a baby then. So this is the first time I see him and I am very excited." 2.57 20. SV/CU GROUP OF PEOPLE FROM BLATO ON KORCULA ISLAND, BIRTH PLACE OF MARIJA PETKOVIC/ONE HOLDING PICTURE OF MARIJA PETKOVIC (2 SHOTS) 3.05 21. MCU (Croatian) MAN FROM BLATO VILLAGE SAYING: "We are all (people from Blato town, birth place of Marija Petkovic) here to celebrate this big day for Croatia and and our town Blato." 3.16 22. MCU POPE JOHN PAUL GIVING BLESSING TO CHILDREN 3.27 23. CU NUNS PRAYING 3.33 24. GV OF DUBROVNIK 3.38 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 21st June 2003 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: DUBROVNIK, CROATIA
- Country: Croatia
- Reuters ID: LVA8I62S2GK2XDQ0FGE2Y96GH50Q
- Story Text: Pope John Paul, visiting one of the most famous cities
on the Adriatic, put a Croatian nun on the road to sainthood
and paid tribute to women who suffered in the war that tore
apart Yugoslavia.
The 83-year-old pope looked somewhat tired at the start
of the second day (June 6) of his trip to Croatia,
occasionally slumping on his throne as he said mass before a
crowd of some 70,000 people gathered in a small port in the
picturesque city of Dubrovnik.
But the pontiff, on the 100th foreign trip of his papacy,
read his speech in a fairly strong voice from an altar
platform overlooking dozens of bobbing sailboats as a hot
breeze blew in from the Adriatic.
At the mass, the pope beatified Sister Marija Petkovic, a
20th-century Croatian nun born on the southern Adriatic island
of Korcula who dedicated her life to serving the poor and
founded an order of nuns, the Daughters of Mercy.
The pope, who suffers from Parkinsons disease and other
ailments, celebrated mass on a special hydraulic chair which
lifts him to the level of the high altar -- sparing him from
having to stand throughout the service.
Petkovic, who died in 1966 and worked in Latin America, is
credited with saving the crew of a Peruvian submarine when a
sailor prayed to her after a disastrous collision.
Wearing resplendent gold vestments, the pope used the
beatification as an occasion to praise the women of
predominantly Catholic Croatia for the suffering they endured
during the country's 1991-1995 war of independence.
Reading his homily in Croatian, he paid tribute to all the
women of Croatia, those who are wives and mothers, those whose
lives were for ever changed by the grief of losing a family
member in the cruel war of the 1990s or by other bitter
troubles they have endured.
The war in Croatia claimed some 20,000 lives, most of them
men. As elsewhere in the Balkans, women have shouldered much
of the burden of the aftermath. Many families were left
without men who traditionally provided their financial income.
More than 13 years later, some 1,100 Croatian men are
still missing. Most were taken prisoner or disappeared at the
start of the war and have not been seen since.
Two national groups -- the Vukovar Mothers and the Mothers
of the Detained and Missing Croatian Defenders -- are
spearheading efforts to find the bodies of the missing men.
The ceremony for the beatification -- the last step before
sainthood -- was a matter of pride for the people of
Dubrovnik, whose old walled city has been restored to its
original beauty after heavy shelling in the war for
independence from Yugoslavia.
The pope will also spend time in Rijeka and the nearby
shrine of the Holy Virgin, and will visit three towns --
Osijek, Djakovo and Zadar -- in areas that were torn by war
and where ethnic divisions remain strong.
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