Safety Concerns Force Pope to Call Off Sarajevo Trip : Bosnia: A terse Vatican statement cites worries about capital’s residents. Pontiff finally gave in to advisers.

It started with papal resolve to carry an offering of peace and reconciliation to a city racked by war. But the gesture quickly lapsed into a nasty game of brinkmanship, and on Tuesday it was Pope John Paul II who blinked.

“We will be with you,” the Pope promised the people of tortured Sarajevo earlier this year. “We will be ever more with you.”

But only in spirit. A prayed-for one-day papal visit to the battle-scarred Bosnian capital scheduled for Thursday died aborning Tuesday: too dangerous.

A terse Vatican statement Tuesday night said the Pope had called off the trip because of his concern for the safety of the residents of Sarajevo. It was the same reason given for scrapping a planned visit last spring to Lebanon, another vortex of ethnic violence.

Tuesday’s statement said the Pope had always insisted on “sufficient guarantees for the safety of the population” but that “unfortunately so far there aren’t such guarantees, despite numerous contacts with all sides.”

Abandonment pleased the Bosnian Serbs, who vigorously opposed the trip, and came as welcome relief to beleaguered U.N. forces, who persuasively insisted that they could not guarantee the safety of the pontiff or the crowds he would draw.

Duels between Muslim and Serbian gunners drowned out the hammers of carpenters building an altar at a Sarajevo ice rink Tuesday afternoon as John Paul met with key aides at the papal summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo south of Rome. There were almost continuous artillery exchanges around Sarajevo airport, and two relief flights were hit by small-arms fire, U.N. officers said.

Lt. Sebastien Pasquier, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers, said Serbs on Monday fired on French peacekeepers protecting the airport, possibly in an attempt to intimidate U.N. troops prior to the Pope’s scheduled visit.

The mounting violence strengthened fears that even a brief visit by the Pope could trigger a blood bath. In recent days, Vatican sources said the Pope stubbornly rebuffed don’t-go advice that flooded him with rare unanimity from officials of his Curia, members of his household and lifelong friends visiting from Poland.

Clerics who had made their careers saying yes to one of the world’s last authoritarian rulers suddenly found themselves pleading with an obstinate pontiff to scrap Sarajevo.

To no avail. Since the city fell hostage to ethnic slaughter 29 months ago, John Paul has developed an abiding preoccupation with Sarajevo, praying publicly and repeatedly for a city ravaged by the “ferocity of people who have forgotten their humanity.”

John Paul had hoped to visit local dignitaries, pray at the cathedral and say a public Mass in a Bosnian echo of pastoral visits he has made to more than 100 countries worldwide.

“He is not coming despite the danger, he is coming because of it,” Bishop Pero Sudar had told the city’s 30,000 minority Roman Catholics.

Saturday night, the 74-year-old pontiff, still limping from a broken hip, told worshipers at Castel Gandolfo: “I truly hope, if there are sufficient guarantees for the security of the local population, to be able to go to that city which has been battered--and which is so dear to me--as a pilgrim of peace.

“I put this trip in the hands of the Virgin Mother and ask her to ensure that all goes ahead without danger to the population,” the pontiff added.

Since then, tension has ratcheted up almost hourly: sniping, artillery exchanges, the inconclusive rustle of diplomats, Bosnian Serb officials saying privately the visit would be “highly undesirable” and U.N. officers saying anonymously that the Pope would be risking his life, that of everybody around him, and that of the faithful who came to see him.

Days ago the Vatican was convinced to postpone the trip. Only the Pope held out, Vatican sources said.

While he delayed a final decision, preparations continued. People in Sarajevo risked snipers to clean streets, hang up banners, paint the podium. The Popemobile went to Sarajevo by military aircraft Tuesday afternoon.

At the Vatican, officials scrambled to accommodate worsening conditions. The visit would not be nine hours, but four or five. The Mass would not be outside but in. The Pope would not take that route but another; riding inside an armored vehicle perhaps. No schedule was ever announced because none could be assured.

Papal trips are normally scripted to the last psalm months in advance, but Sarajevo suddenly became free-form. Vatican reporters accustomed to traveling with the Pope, most of them eminent Italians of a certain age, were told to make their own arrangements for Sarajevo via U.N. flights from Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Thus did dozens fearlessly venture forth, balding pates firmly notched in blue helmets, eminent paunches stuffed inside U.N.-demanded flak jackets.

By Tuesday afternoon, John Paul reluctantly surrendered, a decision he will probably explain at a public audience for pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square today.