When Pope Francis arrives in Poland this week for World Youth Day, he will meet a nation still deeply committed to its conservative Catholic traditions and to the memory of St. John Paul II, who inspired this country’s.
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The faithful had camped out overnight after an evening of entertainment and prayer with the pope there that drew 1.6 million people, according World Youth Day organizers. No, we came for another reason: “To leave a mark”, Francis told a crowd that Polish media estimated at more than 1 million in a field in Brzegi, a village outside the southern city of Krakow. The Argentine pope also heard confessions from seven young people and a priest, speaking Italian, Spanish or French. “Who Is Your Pope?” is both the title of their performance, but also a question they are trying to ask, surprised that the current head of the Catholic Church was not included in the official World Youth Day banners.
Archbishop of Krakow Stanislaw Dziwisz, addressing Francis at the end of the Mass, said: “We are not closed within ourselves”.
The Pope has urged young people not to be couch potatoes.
Pope Francis joined young people at Blonia Park in Krakow, Poland July 29, 2016.
The popemobile that transported Francis to the 31st World Youth Day on Sunday was a VW Golf, barely visible amid the bulky vans that clung to the pontiff’s vehicle on all sides, packed with bodyguards sporting sunglasses and somber expressions.
“How truly hard it is to welcome Jesus, how hard it is to accept a ‘God who is rich in mercy, ‘” the pope said. That church was consecrated in 2013 and dedicated to the late pope who is still the source of great pride in Poland.
While the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous offers them some financial help to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews, Schudrich told the AP he “wanted to come up with a spiritual gift and I thought that a special blessing from the pope would make them feel honored because of their unbelievable morality and humanity”. He has led Masses, visited Auschwitz, and met with Polish politicians, clergy, sick children and many faithful.
Relics of late Pope John Paul II lie in the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II in Krakow, Poland, Saturday, July 30, 2016.
Hundreds of thousands of young people are expected to keep a joyful vigil there in anticipation of a Mass celebrated by Francis in the same meadow on Sunday, the crowning event of the five-day gathering.
“Both of you are a living sign of what God’s mercy wants to accomplish in us”, he said.
Rumors on where the next WYD would take place centered primarily on either Asia or Africa in the lead-up to the Krakow gathering, making the announcement of Panama to a certain extent unexpected, at least among the youth.
He warned youths that the solution “is not conquering hate with more hate, conquering violence with more violence, conquering terror with more terror”, but rather the “response to this world at war has a name: it’s called fraternity, it’s called brotherhood, it’s called communion”.
The mass, attended by the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, the prime minister, Beata Szydło, dozens of cardinals and bishops, and thousands of priests and nuns, was the climax of Francis’s first visit to Poland to celebrate the Catholic church’s global World Youth Day festival.
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The shrine houses relics of the late pope, such as the blood-stained white cassock he was wearing on May 13, 1981, when he was shot and almost killed by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.
