In Sarajevo, Pope Urges End to ‘Death, Division’

Pope John Paul II, completing a promised healing mission delayed by Bosnia’s war, squinted into a snowstorm Sunday and challenged the survivors of Sarajevo to turn their bomb-shattered city into a multiethnic model of tolerance and reconciliation.

“The hope of all people of goodwill,” he told 40,000 worshipers at an outdoor Roman Catholic Mass, “is that what Sarajevo symbolizes will remain confined to the 20th century, and that its tragedies will not be repeated in the millennium about to begin.”

John Paul’s homily was the centerpiece of his 25-hour visit to a city with which he has developed an abiding preoccupation since it fell hostage to ethnic slaughter five years ago. In seven speeches over two days, he lamented a city racked by three armed conflicts since the outbreak in this city of World War I--a place that remains, he said, “scarred by a violent and crazed logic of death and division” 16 months after the latest conflict ended.

The papal mission, originally planned for September 1994 and canceled on two days’ notice amid Bosnian Serb shelling of a besieged Sarajevo, marked John Paul’s return to pastoral travel and diplomacy six months after an appendectomy. He spoke steadily and stepped firmly--at times with the aid of a cane--but looked weary as he headed back to Rome on Sunday evening.

Arriving here to help shore up a shaky peace in the Balkan war, John Paul met collectively and individually with Bosnia-Herzegovina’s three-member presidency, which represents the country’s former antagonists: Muslims, Roman Catholic Croats and Orthodox Christian Serbs.

Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serbian member of the presidency, refused to attend Saturday’s welcoming ceremony. But Krajisnik was pleasant in his brief remarks to the pope Sunday, wishing him good health and saying he hoped the visit would bring “lasting peace.”

John Paul lectured the three presidents, among whom animosity remains quite high, telling them that they must talk to each other.

“The effort required by face-to-face encounter will be richly rewarded,” he said. “It will slowly become possible for the wounds inflicted by the recent terrible war to heal, and real hope for a more worthy future for all the people who together live in this territory will become possible.”

The meeting was held Sunday morning at the scarred National Museum, which sits on what used to be the front line. It has become a compromise venue for presidential sessions because Krajisnik has balked at recognizing the official presidency building, which is occupied by Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim member of the presidency.

The pope’s visit was widely viewed as a test of the 1995 peace accord’s requirement of freedom of movement throughout Bosnia, and for one day, at least, there was compliance. To reach Sunday’s Mass in largely Muslim Sarajevo, busloads of Catholics crossed Serb- and Muslim-held territories without apparent difficulty.

But that freedom was heavily enforced by NATO-led peacekeeping troops temporarily overseeing the peace accords. Their armored personnel carriers rode escort for the pilgrims’ bus caravans, some of which traveled all night to make it to Mass on time, and two North Atlantic Treaty Organization helicopters hovered nearby throughout the 2 1/2-hour service.

Many Catholics, however, fearful of violence, stayed home, and the crowd did not quite fill Sarajevo’s 50,000-seat Kosevo Stadium. Some had good reason to be worried: Explosions have damaged several Catholic churches and mosques in recent weeks, and security agents found a potentially lethal cache of explosives Saturday under a bridge over which the pope was due to pass on his way into the city.

On Sunday, Spanish NATO troops discovered and removed six more land mines that had been planted along the road that pilgrims would take on their way out of Sarajevo, U.N. officials said.

“For a lot of people, it’s still a war,” said Damir Stokic, a Canadian-born Croat studying for the priesthood in the Croatian city of Split. “Young people would have come, but a lot of mothers said no. We filled five buses from Split. We should have had 50.”

Inside the stadium, the crowd was relaxed and festive. Seminarians in black robes, along with other young people, swayed or danced to the beat of amplified spirituals and folk music, partly in an effort to keep warm.

Many people carried yellow-and-white banners of the Holy See, which fluttered like a sea of butterflies when the pontiff entered. Few Bosnian flags were evident, but numerous flags representing Croatia or the outlawed Bosnian Croat breakaway state of Herceg-Bosna were on display.

Seated on an elevated altar overlooking a row of yellow and white flowers flown from the Netherlands, the pontiff faced a stiff wind that suddenly turned white with snow flurries as Mass started and then developed into a brief blizzard. With John Paul trembling visibly from the cold, an attendant opened a white umbrella over his head, folded it up when the sun came out and then opened it again when the flurries resumed.

Returning in his homily to the theme of reconciliation, the pope said in Serbo-Croatian: “Dear brothers and sisters! In 1994, when I wanted so intensely to come here among you . . . it was said that the time [for forgiveness] was not yet right. Has not that time now come?”

Most of the worshipers were Catholic, but a scattering of Muslims in the stadium reflected gratitude by Muslim leaders for papal recognition of their beleaguered republic’s independence and their hopes that John Paul’s visit will help unlock stalled international aid for its postwar recovery.

Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader, was an effusive host, calling John Paul the “highest moral authority on Earth.” After the explosives were discovered Saturday, Vatican officials said, he offered to accompany the pope into Sarajevo from the airport to help guarantee his safety--an offer not accepted because it reached Rome as the pope was on his way here.

“From the first days of the war, [the pope] spoke of peace and brotherhood. I am grateful he is here,” said Izmet Baksic, 62, a retired economist. As a Muslim living in a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo during the war, Baksic said he was put on a forced-labor detail and made to dig military trenches and bunkers for the Serbs.

“The message of the pope is for everyone, regardless of their religion, but I don’t think the politicians will listen,” the white-haired Baksic said, shrugging. “The politicians don’t listen to anyone.”