Pope urges Europe to remember Christian heritage

BRNO, Czech Republic (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that all of Europe — and not only this ex-communist country — must acknowledge its Christian heritage as it copes with rising immigration from other cultures and religions.

The second day of Benedict’s pilgrimage to this highly secular country was marked by a joyous open-air Mass that drew tens of thousands of pilgrims and a sober message for the entire continent.

“History has demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions,” Benedict said.

Church organizers estimated that 120,000 people packed a field beside an airport in this southern city for what was expected to be the biggest turnout of his trip. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said it was the largest turnout for a Mass in the history of the Czech Republic.

Cheering crowd members from the Czech Republic and neighboring countries including Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia sang and waved Czech and Vatican flags. Emergency services said 18 people collapsed and were treated for dehydration, and a police officer was hospitalized with injuries after falling from his horse.

The 82-year-old pontiff was making the three-day visit as Czechs prepare to mark 20 years since their 1989 Velvet Revolution shook off an atheistic communist regime that ruthlessly persecuted the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope warned that technical progress was not enough to “guarantee the moral welfare of society.”

“Man needs to be liberated from material oppressions, but more profoundly, he must be saved from the evils that afflict the spirit,” Benedict told the crowd from under a white canopy beside a 40-foot-high stainless-steel cross. The German-born pope spoke in Italian, and his words were translated into Czech.

Later Sunday, in talks with leaders of other faiths and branches of Christianity, Benedict broadened his message to all of Europe.

“As Europe listens to the story of Christianity, she hears her own,” the pope said during the meeting at Prague’s medieval Hradcany Castle. “Her notions of justice, freedom and social responsibility, together with the cultural and legal institutions established to preserve these ideas and hand them on to future generations, are shaped by her Christian inheritance.”

Europe’s religious roots, he said, “supply the continent with the spiritual and moral sustenance that allows her to enter into meaningful dialogue with people from other cultures and religions.”

Lombardi said the pope shook hands with Jewish leaders at that meeting, but did not mention atrocities against Jews during World War II. An estimated 80,000 Czech Jews perished in the Holocaust, which decimated the nation’s Jewish community.

Benedict is using the trip to recall communist-era religious repression and to urge Czechs to reconsider a faith many have abandoned.

In a meeting with other Christians, he also mentioned Jan Hus, a 15th-century religious reformer seen as a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation who was burned at the stake. He is considered a national hero here.

The pope said discussion of the case was important not only in the quest for Christian unity but also “for the good of all European society.”

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