Echoes of Old Russia Heard at Papal Mass

With chords from ancient Russia echoing through the Vatican, Pope John Paul II breathed warmth into a sodden Roman Easter with an impassioned appeal for religious freedom and human rights.

A choir sang haunting ancient Slavic chants in papal hearing for the first time in 1,000 years as John Paul celebrated Easter Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica.

A cold Sunday drizzle drove the Mass inside the church from its usual site on the front steps of the cathedral, but once it was over, John Paul stood on a balcony to bless tens of thousands of worshipers huddled under a parabola of bright umbrellas in St. Peter’s Square. Stoic vendors did a brisk trade in rosaries and other religious articles for the Pope to bless--and in plastic raincoats for more temporal shelter as a wet sirocco wind drove temperatures into the 50s.

With the rain lancing off his gold bishop’s miter and white robes of joy donned to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, the Pope added an emotional, impromptu invocation to the Virgin Mary at the end of his Easter message “Urbi et Orbi” (To the City and the World).

“Pray for peace in the world, for justice, pray for the rights of man, especially for religious freedom, for every man, for every Christian and non-Christian, pray for us,” the polyglot Pope called emotionally in Italian before offering Easter best wishes in 52 other languages.

The Polish Pope implored Mary to “pray for the solidarity of all peoples in the world, the First World, Second, Third and Fourth, all the world. In yours and our Easter joy, we carry again this weight of humanity, this weight of so many human hearts, our brothers, our sisters, and we repeat: Pray for us.”

Addressing a radio and television audience in 46 countries, the Pope urged Catholics around the world: “Pray to Mary, and with Mary, for all the people, all the families, all the people who suffer, especially for those countries where peace, justice and the means of prosperity are lacking.”

Among the thousands of well-bundled worshipers inside the vast and dank cathedral was Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who later arrived in Israel in another effort to give meaning to the Pope’s words for peace. Shultz, an Episcopalian, sat in the front near a Swiss Guard in Renaissance dress and ceremonial halberd. Shultz’s wife, Helena, was among those who received Communion from the Pope.

Shultz’s current peace mission to the Middle East drew a papal blessing at a private audience on the eve of his departure for the Holy Land, where thousands stayed away from Easter services in fear of the violence resulting from the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

State-run Israel Radio reported that the number of visitors during Holy Week and the Passover period, which coincided this year, was about half of the 34,000 who came last year.

Jerusalem Service

The Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Msgr. Michel Sabbah, the first Palestinian to hold the post, officiated at the service at the 12th-Century Church of the Holy Sepulcher, situated on the site where Jesus is believed to have been resurrected.

The Greek Orthodox Church, whose calendar is a week behind, called off its traditional 2-mile Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem out of concern for the safety of participants. Last week’s Roman Catholic Palm Sunday procession was also canceled.

Echoes of the explicit and implicit East Bloc overtones of the Vatican’s Easter came from Vienna on Sunday, where the newspaper Neue Kronen-Zeitung reported that a papal visit to Austria in June could presage a meeting between the Pope and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The newspaper quoted Austrian Cardinal Franz Koenig, an expert in the Vatican’s relations with the East, as saying that Soviet attitudes seem to be changing toward the Pope and the Catholic Church.

“Despite some misgivings, the former archbishop of Vienna believes it quite possible that the course could be set here for a summit meeting between Pope John Paul II and Kremlin chief Gorbachev,” the Vienna newspaper reported.

Heard in East Europe

“What the Pope says in Austria will be heard and followed with interest in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and beyond,” Koenig was quoted as saying in Kurier, another Austrian daily.

John Paul’s long-abiding concern for the fate of his church in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has quickened amid preparations for Soviet ceremonies marking the 1,000th anniversary of the foundation of Christianity in what is now the Ukraine.

Authentic texts of what the Vatican called “beautiful, poetical and lyrical” Orthodox chants sung Sunday in ancient Slavonic (paleoslavonic) date to the 6th and 7th centuries. They are last known to have been sung to a Pope in the 9th Century, about 200 years before what is now the Orthodox Church broke with Rome. Vatican officials said their inclusion at the Easter Mass was intended to express solidarity with believers in the Soviet Union.

Several times this year, John Paul has publicly lobbied for an invitation to the Soviet Union for the anniversary celebrations, but he has also repeatedly condemned the absence of religious freedom in countries around the world without singling out any by name.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which has about 50 million members and is obedient to the Soviet government, belatedly invited a Vatican delegation--but not the Pope--to attend June observances in Moscow and other cities. The Vatican and the “sister” Orthodox Church led by the Patriarch of Moscow have been talking in search of an end to their 800-year split.

Fate of Ukrainian Catholics

Of even greater papal concern, the Vatican has stressed more than once, is the fate of about 4 million Catholics in the Ukraine in communion with Rome whose religion is suppressed.

John Paul wants to make a pastoral visit to those believers “obedient to the voice of their conscience” and has written an apostolic letter to them that the Vatican is preparing for publication. There is no hint from the Kremlin that John Paul will get his wish for a visit that the Pope said earlier this year “would not only be important from a religious point of view, but also from the perspective of international coexistence.”

The prepared portion of John Paul’s Easter message focused on Mary, to whom he offered special devotion. “During this year which has been dedicated in a particular way to you, during this Marian Year, be present in a special way in the church, be present along the paths of the people of God, paths upon which shines the light of Christ,” the Pope prayed.