POPE CONCLUDES HISTORIC VISIT TO UKRAINE (07/01/01)

POPE CONCLUDES HISTORIC VISIT TO UKRAINE

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV, LVIV - For five days, Pope John Paul II, the leader of nearly 1 billion faithful of the Catholic Church, visited his 6-million-strong flock in Ukraine in a trip that, in the end, surpassed all expectations. It left an indelible mark on the millions who came out to see him, as well as on his relations with the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church that has been in communion with the Vatican See for just over 400 years.

It was the 94th visit in the 24 years of the papacy of the Polish holy father, but one that his personal secretary called "a long held dream," one which he had talked about for "11, 12, even 14 years."

In many ways it was a trip home. Although Pope John Paul II was not born in Ukraine, his Ukrainian mother was born outside of Drohobych. And while this was his first trip to Ukraine as the head of the Catholic Church, he had spent time in the western part of the country in his youth and had been stationed there during his military service.

Nearly 3 million people, the faithful and the curious, saw the aging and frail holy father during a youth rally and at four divine liturgies - twice celebrated in the Latin Rite and twice in the Byzantine Rite. People came from all over the world: Ukrainians from Australia, Canada and the United States, along with hundreds of thousands of Poles and thousands of Belarusian and Russians, Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, and two Congolese who happened to have been in Kyiv at the time.

The unstable weather that followed Pope John Paul II on his five-day trip through Ukraine - rapidly developing thunderstorms and cold rain quickly followed by sunshine and warmth - in many ways quite accurately marked his visit to Kyiv and Lviv and the various ways people responded to it. The visit, like the weather, was a mix of stormy spots and bright sunny moments.

His calls for ecumenism and unity; his praise for the leaders and faithful of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church for surviving the persecution and bloodletting of the Soviet era and his homage to its martyrs; his diplomatically nimble maneuvering around attempts by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to turn the affair into a political exchange of acrimony; and his almost exclusive use of the Ukrainian language in most of his public appearances raised his stature in the eyes of many throughout Ukraine who had not been sure whether they liked this Pole who had done so much to bring about the fall of the Soviet system that had ruled them for so long.

It can safely be said that those who were unsure or indifferent developed respect for the pontiff, even if of a begrudging sort, and those who already admired him came to love him more.

The visit, which lasted from June 23, when Pope John Paul II arrives at Boryspil Airport under sunny skies not long after noontime, and ended on June 27 at Lviv Airport when he boarded a Ukrainian airliner for Ciampino Airport, in Rome as yet another thundercloud gathered over Lviv's skies, had a rhythm much like Wagner's "Die Walküre" - a slow steady climb to a soaring crescendo - but one that did not become fully perceptible until the pope was in Lviv.

It was a beat that began with a slow, ponderous and even dark rhythm in Kyiv, where law enforcement officials discouraged residents and visitors from crowding the streets and balconies to view the already legendary holy father and his renowned popemobile amid rumors of terrorist plots; where leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and its UOC-MP affiliate had organized mass demonstrations and continued to shrilly condemn the visit with outlandish insinuations of his evil intentions to steal their faithful and destroy their Church in Ukraine. In many ways such manifestations overshadowed the moves and words of the holy father in the first few days. Some even accused the pope of being the Anti-Christ.

Attendance was low at the two divine liturgies offered during Pope John Paul II's stay in Kyiv because, not only was the weather threatening, but people were put off by the tight security and a belief that more of the same would make it difficult to get to the Chaika Aerodrome. The distance to the aerodrome, located eight miles from the city center, also did not help.

There were bright spots, however - first and foremost at the meeting of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, where the holy father was quite unexpectedly greeted with hugs and kisses by the leaders of two of three Orthodox confessions in Ukraine, not once but twice. Warm words by the chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine and the head mufti of the Crimean Tatars gave further reason to believe that not all of Ukraine's many religions were against the pope and his journey to Ukraine.

Pope John Paul II won over many Kyivans with assertions that he recognizes the ancient city as the "cradle of Eastern Christianity," a statement he used during several appearances and one repeated by his press secretary during a meeting with journalists.

He also gave Ukrainian Greek-Catholics great pleasure by stopping at St. Nicholas Church, their tiny church located at the site of the Askold's Tomb shrine in Kyiv. There the pontiff prayed to the Our Lady of Zarvanytsia, whose icon had been brought to Kyiv from the tiny village in western Ukraine especially at the pope's request. A cloudburst greeted the holy father as he drove onto the church grounds, but, as if on cue, the rain suddenly stopped when he entered the chapel-like structure. As he exited, the sun broke through the clouds leading, not surprisingly, to assertions by some of those present that the miracle-giving icon had done it once again.

The rhythm of the visit markedly quickened and took on a soaring element when the pope's Ukrainian airliner touched down in Lviv. There the mood of Pope John Paul II, who had acted soberly and with restraint during the first part of his trip, lightened considerably.

He was greeted by hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic supporters and well-wishers as his entourage and his popemobile wound through the narrow, cobblestone streets of this medieval town. It gathered more momentum during the first mass, celebrated in Polish in the Latin Rite and largely attended by Poles from across the border - more than 100,000 of whom had crossed the border on the previous day.

The trip began to reach its climax that afternoon at a youth rally attended by a crowd estimated at 250,000 to 500,000 mostly young people. As what seemed like a never ending downpour continued to drench and chill the crowd, the holy father interrupted his homily and spontaneously broke into song. For more than a minute, with an unusually sure and steady voice, he sang several stanzas of a Polish folk song calling for the rain to stop. The solo caused squeals of delight and laughter, and raised the spirits of the drenched multitudes.

The ultimate crescendo, however, occurred the next day, when between 1 million and 1.5 million people descended on the Lviv Hippodrome for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic liturgy and the beatification of 27 martyrs of the faith and the foundress of a religious order.

Jeffrey Wills, spokesperson for the UGCC press service, called it "the largest gathering of people in history for a Byzantine liturgy." Father Borys Gudziak, rector of the Lviv Theological Institute, referring to the Byzantine tradition in which everybody takes part in singing the liturgy, called it the "largest choir ever assembled."

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