Pope tackles tolerance, totalitarianism and forgiveness in Baltic visit

In Lithuania, a nation that has experienced invasions, atrocities and persecution, Pope Francis began his visit with a plea to break down walls of suspicion and fear.

“If we look at the world scene in our time, more and more voices are sowing division and confrontation – often by exploiting insecurity or situations of conflict – and proclaiming that the only way possible to guarantee security and the continued existence of a culture is to try to eliminate, cancel or expel others,” the Pope said when he arrived on September 22.

Going directly from the airport to Lithuania’s presidential palace, Pope Francis’ first appointment was with the president, government authorities and civic leaders.

He acknowledged the country’s painful past, which included “numerous trials and sufferings: detentions, deportations and even martyrdom”. But he also praised the country’s culture and people for tenaciously resisting attacks on its freedom.

The Pope’s visit, from September 22-25 to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, comes in the year the three Baltic nations are celebrating the 100th anniversary of their declarations of independence after World War I. While declared Soviet republics in 1940, the countries were occupied by the Nazis during World War II and then lived under Soviet rule from 1944 to 1990.

Pope Francis, addressing national leaders, said that until the Nazis and Soviets arrived, people of a variety of national backgrounds and religions lived peacefully in Lithuania.

The “totalitarian ideologies” though, “by sowing violence and lack of trust, undermined this ability to accept and harmonise differences”, he said. As Lithuanians consolidate their independence and democracy, they must return to those earlier cultural values of “tolerance, hospitality, respect and solidarity”.

Ideology

Lithuanians, the Pope said, know first-hand what happens when a political ideology tries “to impose a single model that would annul differences under the pretence of believing that the privileges of a few are more important than the dignity of others or the common good”.

After leaving the presidential palace he visited the image of Mother of Mercy (Mater Misericordiae) at the Chapel of the Gate of Dawn and prayed.

This was followed by a meeting with young people in Vilnius where Pope Francis said he wanted a relaxed conversation, like they were sitting in a pub drinking “a beer or a gira”, a slightly alcoholic beverage made from fermented rye bread.

Yet the stories two young adults shared with him and his responses to their concerns were not casual.

Monika Midveryte spoke about growing up with an alcoholic father who beat her and eventually committed suicide. A young man, identified only as Jonas, spoke about being diagnosed with an auto-immune disease and how his illness made him and his young wife realise just how serious their wedding vows were.

Meeting the teens and young adults outside the city’s Cathedral of Ss Stanislaus and Ladislaus, which was destroyed and rebuilt several times, Pope Francis urged the two and all their peers to think about how God has been close to them, too, even amid tragedy.

Almost always, he said, it is through other people that God’s grace arrives to those in need. “It doesn’t drop from the sky. It doesn’t happen by magic, there’s no magic wand.”

“Don’t let the world make you believe that it is better to do everything on your own,” the Pope told young people. “Don’t yield to the temptation of getting caught up in yourself, ending up selfish or superficial in the face of sorry, difficulty or temporary success.”

Pope Francis told the young people, many of whom dream of emigrating for more opportunities, that their lives are not “a theatre piece or a video game” with a final curtain or a lurking “game over”.

The important thing, he said, is to keep praying and keep moving forward, “seeking the right way without being afraid to retrace our steps if we make a mistake. The most dangerous thing is to confuse the path with a maze that keeps us wandering in circles without ever making real progress.”

“Jesus gives us plenty of time, lots of room for failure,” the Pope said. But “he never jumps off the ship of our lives; he is always there at life’s crossroads. Even when our lives go up in flames, he is always there to rebuild them”.

Before joining the young people, Pope Francis stopped at the ‘Gate of Dawn’, one of nine gates that led into the ancient city of Vilnius. The Pope mingled with dozens of orphaned children and the families that have adopted or fostered them. After praying silently for several minutes before the oversized icon of Our Lady, Mother of Mercy that marks the gate, the Pope gave a brief talk and then prayed a decade of the rosary with thousands of people gathered in the street.

Noting how the icon and the gate were the only parts of the city’s fortified walls to remain after an invasion in 1799, Pope Francis said Mary teaches Christians that “we can defend without attacking, that we can keep safe without the unhealthy need to distrust others”.

“When we close our hearts for fear of others, when we build walls and barricades,” the Pope said, “we end up depriving ourselves of the Good News of Jesus, who shares in the history and the lives of others” and is present in their suffering.

The wounds of others are the wounds of Jesus, he said. And “charity is the key that opens to us the door of Heaven”.

The following day, outside the former KGB headquarters in Vilnius, Pope Francis ended a day of paying homage to victims of totalitarianism and of warning Lithuanians to be attentive to any signs of anti-Semitism or hatred.

The walls of the KGB building – a former jail and execution site – echo the cry of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the Pope said.

Silent
 prayer

Although thousands of people filled the square in front of the building, the mood was sombre. And it was punctuated by long pauses for silent prayer.

He had toured the museum with 79-year-old Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius, whose photo is featured prominently on a wall display honouring the priests and bishops who endured imprisonment in the building’s basement.

The Pope had gone to the museum after stopping to pray at a monument to more than 40,000 Jews in Vilnius killed by the Nazis. The prayer coincided with the national commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto.

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Standing by the former KGB headquarters, Pope Francis prayed that God would “keep us alert” and strengthen the commitment of Catholics and all Lithuanians to fighting all forms of injustice and defending the dignity of all people.

Pope Francis had begun the day in Kaunas, a city about 60 miles West. But the memory of the victims of Nazism and communism and the obligation of today’s Christians to fight all forms of hatred dominated there as well.

His last appointment was with priests, religious women and men and seminarians, and he began with ad-libbed remarks.

“I want to share what I feel,” the Pope said. “Looking at you, I see behind you many martyrs – anonymous martyrs, in the sense that we don’t even know where they were buried.”

“Do not forget. Remember. You are children of martyrs. That is your strength,” the Pope told them. “They are saints.”

Earlier in day, before reciting the Angelus prayer after Mass in Kaunas’ Santakos Park, Pope Francis drew special attention to the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish ghetto and to the evil of anti-Semitism. Before the Nazis invaded the country, at least 200,000 citizens were Jewish; fewer than 15,000 survived.

A visit to the famed Hill of Crosses near Vilnius was not on Pope Francis’ schedule, but he did point to it as a place where, especially during Soviet times, Catholics defiantly planted crosses to proclaim their Faith.

Earlier, celebrating Mass in the park, Pope Francis had insisted that for a Christian the mistreatment Lithuanians endured first under the Nazis and then under the communists can never justify mistreating others. Instead, the experience must make victims and survivors even more sensitive and attentive to new attempts to denigrate or dominate certain groups of people.

Gospel 
reading

Referring to the day’s Gospel reading from St Mark in which Jesus warns his disciples of the suffering that is to come, Pope Francis said that naturally the disciples “wanted nothing to do with trials and hardships”. And, in fact, they were more interested in discussing who among them was the greatest.

“The thirst for power” is not an unusual reaction to having endured suffering, the Pope said. Nor is discussing “who was better, who acted with greater integrity in the past, who has the right to more privileges than others”.

But when his disciples started speaking that way, the Pope said, Jesus pointed to a child, one who was small and in need of protection.

And, the Pope asked, “whom would Jesus place in our midst today?”

“Who is it who has nothing to give us, to make our effort and our sacrifices worthwhile?” Pope Francis asked. “Perhaps it is the ethnic minorities of our city. Or the jobless who have to emigrate. Maybe it is the elderly and the lonely, or those young people who find no meaning in life because they have lost their roots.”

Whoever “the least” maybe, he said, Christians are called to help them

‘We need to be converted’ says Francis in parting shot

In Estonia Pope Francis called for the Church to be converted and to answer young people’s call for change.

After a welcome ceremony, a meeting with the president and government authorities, local leaders and the diplomatic corps Francis spoke at an ecumenical encounter with young people in Charles Church, which is Lutheran.

“When we adults refuse to acknowledge some evident reality, you tell us frankly: ‘Can’t you see this?’ Some of you who are a bit more forthright might even say to us: ‘Don’t you see that nobody is listening to you any more, or believes what you have to say?’” the Pope acknowledged during the meeting Tallinn.

“We ourselves need to be converted,” Francis added, “we have to realise that in order to stand by your side we need to change many situations that, in the end, put you off”.

The Pope’s speeches had focused on calling the local Faithful to openness and mercy, but on Tuesday he mentioned the sex abuse crisis for the first time on the trip.

Young people “are upset by sexual and economic scandals that do not meet with clear condemnation, by our unpreparedness to really appreciate the lives and sensibilities of the young, and simply by the passive role we assign them. These are just a few of your complaints,” the Pope said.

“We want to respond to them; as you yourselves put it, we want to be a ‘transparent, welcoming, honest, inviting, communicative, accessible, joyful and interactive community’,” he added.

Denominations

Francis met with youth of varying denominations and ethnicities in the Lutheran Charles’ Church in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. He was joined by the Evangelical Lutheran Archbishop of Estonia, Urmas Viilma, the President of the Estonian Council of Churches, Archbishop Andres Põder and the Apostolic Administrator in Estonia, Bishop Philippe Jourdan. Representatives from other Christian communities in the country also attended.

This was followed by an encounter with people receiving assistance from the Church’s charitable services in Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral and a Mass in Freedom Square. Flying back to Rome he departed Tallinn just before 7pm, ending his Papal trip to the Baltic States.

Latvia hears Pope ask: what would Mary do?

‘What would Mary do?’ – that was the question Pope Francis, in effect, asked Latvian Catholics gathered at their nation’s popular Marian shrine.

Celebrating Mass on September 24 at the Basilica of the Assumption, a shrine holding a beloved icon of the Mother of God in Aglona, 60 miles from the Russian border, Pope Francis insisted Marian devotion was about more than just pilgrimages; it means imitating Mary by staying close to those who suffer, acknowledging situations of injustice, forgiving offences and promoting reconciliation.

In a country that experienced 50 years of Soviet domination and that remains fiercely proud of its post-conquest independence, members of Latvia’s large Russian minority have struggled to obtain citizenship rights, and many claim they still face discrimination. Russian speakers make up about a quarter of the population.

The country declared a holiday in connection with his visit and that, combined with his early morning arrival and cold rainy weather, meant there were few people on the streets of Riga.

But thousands gathered later in the city centre to watch Pope Francis and President Raimonds Vejonis lay flowers at the Freedom Monument, a towering memorial to Latvia’s independence.

The sculpture, dedicated in 1935, was a source of irritation to the Soviets once they annexed Latvia after World War II, but every plan to destroy the monument was put on hold out of concern for the social unrest it would provoke.

The centrepiece of Pope Francis’ morning in Riga was an ecumenical prayer service in the city’s Lutheran cathedral. Lutherans, Catholics and Orthodox each account for between 18% and 25% of the country’s population.

Following the meeting Pope Francis went to the Catholic St James Cathedral for prayer and a brief meeting with older men and women, who, the Pope said, witnessed “the horror of war, then political repression, persecution and exile”, including to Siberia.

Reaching the small town of Aglona after a helicopter ride from the capital, Pope Francis drew special attention to Mary at the foot of the cross and Mary as she is seen in the Magnificat, her song of praise of God in response to the angel Gabriel’s news that she would bear Jesus.

Today, the Pope said in his homily at the Basilica of the Assumption, Mary “stands near those who suffer, those from whom the world flees, including those who have been put on trial, condemned by all, deported”.