Pontiff Urges Healing for Croatia, Peace for Kosovo

Ending a three-day pilgrimage to the Balkans, Pope John Paul II on Sunday urged Croatians to heal the scars of war and dictatorship, and appealed to the international community to give “timely help” to settle the conflict in Kosovo.

The pope called on more than 300,000 worshipers at a seaside Mass here to “give a new face” to Croatia, the most Roman Catholic country in the region, by renewing its moral values.

“This is an urgent task, for without values there can be no true freedom or true democracy,” he said. “Fundamental among these is respect for human life, for the rights and dignity of the individual, as well as for the rights and dignity of [ethnic] peoples.”

The pope coupled his nationally televised peacetime prescriptions, delivered on an idyllic, summer-like day by the Adriatic Sea, with a cry of “anxious concern” over the still-simmering conflict between ethnic Albanian separatists and government troops in neighboring Serbia’s Kosovo province.

“May understanding, mutual respect, forgiveness and reconciliation at last take the place of violence and destruction” in Kosovo, he said. “May the international community, with a great sense of solidarity, not fail to provide its timely help.”

The pope’s appeal, which drew applause from the crowd, was meant to discourage Western military action to restrain Serbian forces in Kosovo. But he did not mention the mounting threat of such intervention, nor did he outline steps to pacify the province.

As the pontiff spoke, fishing and pleasure boats bobbed in Split’s harbor, loaded with families following the Mass on the beach. They blared sirens to greet and bid goodbye to the 78-year-old visitor, who stood in white robes under a white umbrella on an altar resembling a giant sailboat with a white cross as a mast.

Stooped and frail, the pope walks with the aid of a cane and trembles from an ailment believed to be Parkinson’s disease. But he appeared in relatively good form during his visit, the 84th foreign journey of a globe-trotting papacy nearing its 20th anniversary.

“He’s so cute! He looks exactly like my grandmother,” exclaimed Maja Maric, an economics student at the University of Zagreb in the Croatian capital, as John Paul waved from his popemobile on the way to the altar. “Everyone would like to take him home.”

The visit was the Polish pontiff’s second to Croatia--he was first here in 1994--and his fourth to the Balkans, which erupted in bloodshed with the 1991 breakup of the Yugoslav federation.

Bosnian Croats flocked here for Sunday’s Mass, as did Croats from the Yugoslav region of Montenegro, whose border with Croatia recently was opened for the first time since the war.

Eighty percent of Croatia’s 4.5 million people are Catholic, while most Serbs are Orthodox Christians.

The pope prayed at the Mass for people of all ethnic groups still awaiting news of their loved ones who vanished during the war, for refugees still not able to return home and for those seeking to rebuild their lives.

Metropolitan Jovan, the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia, attended the Mass, as did a Muslim religious delegation, and applauded John Paul’s appeal for interethnic tolerance. So did President Franjo Tudjman, the hard-liner led Croatia to independence.

Tudjman, reelected last year in what European monitors called a “free but not fair” vote, is widely accused of mistreating minorities, abusing human rights and severely limiting press freedom. Greeting the pope’s arrival Friday, he portrayed Croatia as a flourishing democracy misunderstood and shunned by the European Union.

In a farewell speech with Tudjman at his side, John Paul urged European leaders “not to forget the tragedies” endured by Croatians.

“No one must be forgotten on the path to the common European house,” he said.

But he added: “For her part, Croatia must show great patience, wisdom. . . . After long years of dictatorship, it is now necessary to construct a democracy based on the moral values inscribed in the very nature of the human being.”