Pope Launches Holy Year With Ceremonial Opening of Basilica Door

With a ceremonial push by frail hands, Pope John Paul II opened the Holy Door to St. Peter’s Basilica late Friday to launch a yearlong Roman Catholic celebration marking roughly 2,000 years since Jesus Christ’s birth--an event, he said, that “changed the course of human events.”

“This is the gate of the Lord,” the pope chanted in Latin as he approached the towering bronze doors on unsteady feet, helped up three steps by a pair of aides. A chorus replied, “The just will pass through it.”

Two maintenance workers inside the packed, darkened basilica forced the doors to swing inward at the pope’s touch--a symbolic opening that, in 500-year-old church tradition, beckons sinners to pass through Christ to a reconciliation with God.

For years, John Paul has struggled against infirmity to reach this milestone--the start of Holy Year observances choreographed to put his own Christian humanist stamp on the next millennium. As the doors parted before him 34 minutes before midnight, he knelt at the threshold in silent prayer.

At that moment, the lights came on in Catholicism’s holiest shrine, kicking off a colorful ceremony involving worshipers from all continents--Africans blowing elephant tusk horns, Asians bearing flowers, Europeans and Americans holding lamps.

The stooped, 79-year-old pontiff led a procession of cardinals, bishops and priests through the door, followed by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and other VIPs. Then he proclaimed the 54-week Holy Year opened and said midnight Mass.

An estimated 1.5 billion viewers watched a live telecast in 58 countries--including Cuba, where Communist authorities banned public celebrations of Christmas until two years ago. Italy’s RAI network aired the same TV footage in real time on the Web.

The Vatican admitted 8,200 worshipers into the basilica and turned away 54,000 more who had sought tickets. It set up 40,000 chairs and four giant screens in St. Peter’s Square so others could follow the Mass on a cool, cloudy night outside.

Tens of thousands more spectators stood in the brightly lighted square, joining in the applause as the Holy Door swung open.

“Bravo!” shouted Francesco Dimuno, a 34-year-old folk singer from Naples with a chest full of religious medals, a large banner depicting the Holy Trinity and a baritone voice that belted out “Alleluias” along with the choir.

“He’s a great pope,” Dimuno added, standing in the middle of the crowd. “It’s a shame he cannot walk out here among us, but I understand that he’s not well. You can see the suffering on his face.”

In a homily read early today, John Paul preached to his global audience like a Christian missionary.

“After 2,000 years, we relive this mystery 1/8of Christ’s birth 3/8 as a unique and unrepeatable event,” he said in a steady voice. “You alone are the son of God. In an ineffable way, your birth has changed the course of human events. This is the truth which on this night the church wants to pass on to the third millennium.”

Popes have decreed Holy Years, or Jubilees, 26 times since 1300, and they have opened the Holy Door in Holy Years since 1500. This time, as in the past, Catholics are being called to a period of penitence, forgiveness, reconciliation, hope and justice.

But John Paul, already the most visible religious leader of all time, has seized the countdown to 2000 to push a pacifist, humanist agenda on the world stage and boost his authority within the church. The Polish pontiff says he has believed since his election 21 years ago that he was chosen to lead the world’s 1 billion Catholics into the next millennium.

Special Masses opening the Holy Year were being held in cathedrals, basilicas and parish churches around the world--under Vatican instruction not to act before the pope’s proclamation. That meant that Catholics in time zones ahead of Rome had to start the celebrations Christmas Day, not Christmas Eve.

In recent months, the pope has urged political leaders to honor the Holy Year by abolishing the death penalty where it’s still on the books and by forgiving or at least reducing the poorest countries’ multibillion-dollar debts to international creditors.

To purify his church, he is also calling for repentance for sins committed by Catholics across history in errant, overzealous defense of their faith. On a “Day of Pardon” set for March 12, he is expected to atone for such dark pages of church history as the Crusades, the Inquisition and forced evangelization of the New World.

And he has broadened the ways that penitent Catholics can earn an individual Holy Year indulgence--a kind of church-granted amnesty for certain forms of punishment, in this life or hereafter, for sin. They are no longer required to make a pilgrimage to Rome, for example, but can worship at designated shrines closer to home, do a charitable deed or give up cigarettes or alcohol.

In today’s homily, John Paul stressed what he called the essential role of Christ in humankind’s redemption.

“Be for us the true door, symbolized by the door which on this night we have solemnly opened 1/8and 3/8 which leads us into the mystery of the father,” he prayed. “Grant that no one may remain outside his embrace of mercy and peace.”

Some of the pope’s turn-of-the-millennium ambitions have been frustrated. Orthodox Christian leaders, whose churches rejected the Vatican’s authority in 1054, have refused to discuss his proposal to restore “total communion.” The Vatican says it is still uncertain how many Orthodox leaders will come to Rome for a special Jubilee prayer for Christian unity Jan. 18.

John Paul expects to pray at Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee region in March. But his dream of a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Abraham, in Iraq, has been delayed indefinitely by wrangling over protocol with President Saddam Hussein’s government.

Advancing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder, have apparently forced the pope to scale back his demanding Holy Year schedule--a move certain to disappoint many of the expected 26 million visitors who had heard that he’d be visible nearly every day. In addition to his weekly audiences, the Vatican now says the pope will appear in public 76 times at the Vatican and in Rome.

In a poignant Christmas greeting to Vatican officials Tuesday, John Paul compared his frailty to that of St. Peter, the first pope, and said it’s “the power of Christ” that sustains anyone with his responsibilities.

“Perhaps this stooped, tired, aged figure will give this Holy Year a more human character, in the sense that here is a pope who gives everything for the church, all of himself,” said Angelo Scelzo, a Vatican spokesman.

Vatican watchers speculate that frail health prompted the pope to depart from a tradition in which popes have opened the Holy Door by first using a gilded silver hammer to break through the brick wall enclosing it. This time, workers tore down the wall in advance.

The door had been sealed after the last Holy Year, in 1983. It will remain open until the current celebrations end with the Feast of Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2001.