Pope Urges Tolerance in Balkan Beatification

After years of trying to pacify the Balkans through diplomacy and prayer, Pope John Paul II used his saint-making powers Sunday to offer the region a lesson in tolerance as he honored this former Yugoslav republic’s 19th century spiritual father.

At an outdoor Mass for about 170,000 people, the pope beatified Anton Martin Slomsek, a Roman Catholic teacher, poet and bishop who promoted the Slovenes’ language and sense of identity during Austrian domination.

The ceremony brought Slomsek to within one formal step of becoming the first saint from this predominantly Catholic country, which broke from Yugoslavia eight years ago to gain independence for the first time.

Slomsek managed to inspire Slovenes toward that independence without preaching the “shortsighted nationalism” of hatred for their neighbors, John Paul told the sun-drenched crowd.

“When I look upon our dear countries in the Balkans, so sadly scarred in recent years by disputes and violence, by extreme nationalism, cruel ethnic cleansing and by wars between peoples and cultures, I would like to show the testament of the Blessed Slomsek,” he said.

“His example bears witness to the fact that it is possible to be a sincere patriot, and with the same sincerity live and cooperate with people of other nationalities, cultures and faiths.”

John Paul has now invested five trips and much effort trying to stop ethnic bloodshed in the former Yugoslav federation. In 1997, he preached in postwar Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, against the “inhuman logic of violence.” Last spring, he tried unsuccessfully to get NATO to observe an Orthodox Easter bombing halt against Serbia, but he also condemned Yugoslav troops who were then purging ethnic Albanians from the Serbian province of Kosovo.

His efforts have at times been divisive. His beatification in October of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, a Croatian Catholic nationalist hero, drew protests from many Serbs and Jews, who viewed the late cardinal as a wartime Nazi collaborator.

In Slomsek, the pope found a nationalist free of controversy.

Born in 1800, the charismatic preacher spent most of his 62 years founding schools, teaching and writing in the Slovenian language. His nationalism was driven less by politics, biographers say, than by a certainty that he’d be a better priest if he communicated with Slovenes in their native tongue rather than the German favored by Slovenian intellectuals of the day.

But his work helped fuel a struggle for political unification among Slovenes, then divided among Austrian provinces under Hapsburg rule. Slovenes in 1918 became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes--later renamed Yugoslavia--but they had to wait until Yugoslavia’s post-Communist breakup to get their own country.

Slomsek’s best-known writing was an encyclopedia for children, and one of his 40 poems, “My Nation Is Heaven,” was sung at Sunday’s Mass. A huge portrait of the bishop hung behind the altar with his motto: “May the holy faith be your guiding light, may your mother tongue be the key to the redemptive culture of your nation.”

The crowd, including visitors from Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Argentina, Canada and the United States, greeted the stooped, 79-year-old pontiff with warm applause as he preached in an often tremulous voice. A stiff wind ripped off his skullcap three times.

More than any other pope this century, John Paul has used sainthood to enhance the church’s image of holiness. He has canonized at least 280 people as saints and beatified more than 800 other candidates--often in elaborate ceremonies, like Sunday’s, in the honored person’s native land.

Catholic and non-Catholic Slovenes welcomed the nine-hour visit, three months after a visit by President Clinton, as an honor in itself.

“We are a young state, still trying to reaffirm our identity,” said Milan Predan, editor of Vecer, a newspaper in Maribor, a medieval city of 135,000. “A lot of people still confuse our country with Slovakia. Any event that puts Slovenia on TV is important.”

But some at the Mass said they were not comfortable that the pope, like Clinton before him, came to single out their tiny, prospering country--a candidate for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union--as an example of good Balkan behavior.

“No way are we any longer part of the Balkans,” protested Miran Zigert, a 33-year-old farmer. “There’s been too much war in the Balkans for anyone to expect its people to live together. Slomsek is a good example for us--and no one else.”

Some Catholics hoped that John Paul would play on Slomsek’s fame as an educator to back the Slovenian church in its campaign to teach religion in public schools. The Communists-turned-democrats who still run Slovenia no longer suppress religion but enforce secular public education, citing the rights of non-Catholics, who make up nearly 20% of the country’s 2 million people.

John Paul in his public remarks mentioned neither the schools dispute nor the church’s struggle to recover real estate holdings seized by Yugoslavia’s Communists.