A vast crowd of up to half a million packed an open-air stadium in western Ukraine yesterday as Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in the Catholic heartland of the former Soviet republic. Organisers said that between 300,000 and 500,000 Catholics had gathered at Lviv's racecourse where the Pontiff arrived on the penultimate day of his visit to Ukraine.
The huge turnout contrasted with disappointing attendances for two Masses held by the Pope in Kiev, traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy.
The Russian Orthodox leader, Patriarch Alexis II, having warned that the Pope's visit could further strain already relations between his church and the Vatican, yesterday said that a single apology from Pope John Paul II was not enough to heal centuries of division between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In his first statement on the Pope's controversial visit, the Patriarch said: "Centuries of division between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches cannot be overcome by a single statement."
At the start of his five-day visit to Ukraine, the Pope had begged for Orthodox forgiveness for Catholic "errors" and called for an end to the 1,000-year schism between the eastern and western churches.
Orthodox militants accuse Uniate Catholics of having seized some 2,500 parishes in western Ukraine between 1989 and 1991, the final years of the Soviet Union. The pro-Moscow church also claims that Ukraine's Catholics are seeking to win converts among the 50million population, although the Pope has formally rejected the charge of proselytism.
In Lviv yesterday hundreds of thousands of Catholics of all ages waved blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted "Long live the Pope" in Ukrainian and Polish. Speaking in both languages, the Pope hailed as "a special cause for rejoicing" and a "marvellous gift" his own personal connection with the Lviv, which was until the second World War a part of his native Poland.
Outlawed by the Soviet Union in 1946, and all but destroyed in the course of half a century of Communist persecution, the Uniate or Greek Catholic church has risen from the ashes since it was officially reestablished a decade ago in newly independent Ukraine.
The Pope yesterday made a passionate appeal to Ukraine's Catholics to help end the bitter disputes that have marred his visit. He acknowledged that many Poles still live in Lviv, the scene of racial conflict between the two peoples in the aftermath of the first World War. "The Christians of Poland and Ukraine must walk together in the name of the one Christ, guided by the principle of unity. May pardon given and received spread like a healing balm in every heart," he said. He urged his people "to work for the triumph of what unites over what divides" and added: "Be united."
Uniate Catholicism has grown steadily during the post-Soviet decade and now claims six million believers as opposed to 10 million practising Orthodox faithful.
Pope John Paul beatified Archbishop Jozef Bilczewski and Father Zygmunt Gorazdowski and is expected to beatify 28 mostly Soviet-era martyrs at a Byzantine Mass at the Lviv racecourse today, the last day of his visit.