Pope Exhorts America to Set Aside Divisions : Religion: Pontiff cites Gettysburg Address during Mass in Baltimore. Hundreds of thousands line parade route.

Pope John Paul II, touring the city that spawned Catholicism in America, ended his emotion-charged five-day visit to the United States on Sunday with a warning that Americans must learn to live together if their democracy is to thrive.

In a homily to more than 50,000 people crowded into Oriole Park for Mass, the Pope, quoting Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, asked whether a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure.”

The Pope insisted that this question, which Lincoln raised during a war fought over states’ rights and slavery, “is no less a question for the present generation of Americans.”

“The basic question before a democratic society is: ‘How ought we to live together?’ ” he said. He stressed that in seeking the answer, Americans needed to employ “moral truth and moral reasoning.”

Although the Pope’s message seemed more vague and elusive than those of his previous sermons, there was little doubt, after four days of unabashed pleas that Americans not turn their backs on minorities and the impoverished, that he was expressing his own concern over divisiveness in American society.

In an event-filled day, the Pope, riding in the bulletproof “Popemobile,” led a procession of mainly young people and members of ethnic groups in a lengthy downtown parade that police said was witnessed by about 350,000 people.

He also ate a simple chicken lunch at a soup kitchen operated by Catholic volunteers. Although most of the two dozen people who joined him for lunch were volunteer workers, two regular patrons of the kitchen were there as well.

Before departing for Rome from Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the Pope delivered a farewell message that reiterated his warning about the fragility of democracy.

“Democracy needs wisdom,” John Paul said. “Democracy needs virtues if it is not to turn against everything it is meant to help and encourage.”

Democracy, he said, does not mean dominance by “the powers of the majority and of the most vocal.” He cautioned that if a spirit of skepticism about democracy prevailed, “the democratic system would be shaken in its foundations.” But he quickly added that the United States had a bulwark against this in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which he described as “the law written by God in human hearts.”

Vice President Al Gore, who turned out at the airport to bid the Pope farewell, said:

“You have lifted up our hearts to the Lord, and we are grateful to you. Very few speak the number of languages that you do, but we all understand your message of unity and of the communality of the human spirit.”

For Baltimore, the Pope’s visit provided an opportunity to exult not only in the leader of the Catholic Church but also in itself. Maryland was founded in 1634 as a colony where English Catholics could live in peaceful refuge.

Baltimore is the site of the first Catholic diocese, the first cathedral, the first seminary and the first Catholic parochial school in the United States. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American canonized as a saint, established her schools and orphanages in Baltimore in the 19th Century.

The Pope, forced to hold Masses in cold rain in New York and New Jersey, ended his U.S. visit on a pleasant, sunlit day with only wisps of clouds in the sky. He arrived at the baseball stadium while a popular singing group, Boyz II Men, was performing. The performance continued while he rode the “Popemobile” around the park.

Although less boisterous and demonstrative than the cheering throngs in New York and New Jersey, the crowd did not lack enthusiasm. The Marylanders tended to applaud incessantly rather than cheer wildly.

Wearing green vestments, the Pope celebrated Mass on a simple altar near the bleachers in deepest center field, more than 400 feet from home plate. A tall wooden cross stood behind him, and the altar was decorated mainly with flowers. Among those in attendance were 200 American bishops.

In his homily, John Paul, who had visited Baltimore twice before becoming Pope in 1978, took note of Maryland’s history, calling it “the birthplace of the Church in Colonial America.”

Paying tribute to Americans for “an impressive array of witnesses and achievements,” including work in education, hospitals and overseas missions, the Pope said he was concerned that some Catholics “are tempted to discouragement or disillusionment.”

“They are tempted,” he said, “to cry out to the Lord . . .: ‘Why does God let us see ruin and misery? Why does God permit evil?’ ” Cautioning that Catholics must not “harden our hearts,” the Pope quoted a proverb, both in its original Polish and then in English translation: “God takes his time, but he is just.”

The city of Baltimore put an army of young volunteers on the streets, wearing yellow T-shirts honoring the Pope and handing out brochures describing the landmarks of the city and its association with the Catholic Church.

The Postal Service set up a booth outside the ballpark to sell a special envelope and cancellation mark honoring the visit. The envelope displayed a drawing of an out-of-print stamp honoring the city’s Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

Security was extremely rigorous, perhaps even more so than in New York City. When the Mass was completed and the Pope had left at the head of the procession, the police would not let the tens of thousands inside the stadium cross the street to their buses and trains until almost all the rest of the parade had gone by. The delay lasted more than an hour.

After touring the 174-year-old Basilica of the Assumption, the oldest cathedral in the United States, the Pope addressed 1,350 city leaders at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, which was completed in 1959.

“Religious tolerance is based on the conviction that God wishes to be adored by people who are free,” he told them. “ . . . As I said at the United Nations, the world must learn to live with differences.”

Cardinal William Keeler, the archbishop of Baltimore, said John Paul had brought a “spiritual explosion of joy to our city.”

* PONTIFF’S THEMES: Papal message cut across grain of political trends in U.S. A19