Pope Appeals for Interfaith Peace Effort

Pope John Paul II, celebrating Mass here Sunday before thousands of Christians and Muslims, urged people of both faiths to pray together against violence and not to allow the attacks on the United States to deepen divisions between them.

“I beg God to keep the world in peace,” he declared.

The special prayer came at the end of the first papal Mass in Central Asia, a largely Muslim region that is bracing for a threatened U.S. retaliatory strike against nearby Afghanistan.

Holding up Kazakhstan as a model of interreligious tolerance, the Roman Catholic leader called on adherents of all faiths to “work together to build a world without violence, a world that loves life and grows in justice and solidarity.”

The appeal echoed President Bush and other leaders who have warned Christians not to demonize all Muslims for the Sept. 11 slaughters at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. U.S. officials suspect that the strikes on those targets by hijacked airliners were the work of an Islamist-led terrorist network directed by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi expatriate apparently sheltered by Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.

The pope said Mass in Russian but switched to English for his pacifist prayer, aiming at a global audience.

John Paul has condemned the attacks, and aides say he supports the goal of bringing the perpetrators to justice. But he fears that a violent escalation will undermine his many efforts to overcome centuries of hatred and suspicion between Islam and Christianity.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the pope had studied Bush’s Thursday night address to Congress and decided to speak out here after rereading it Saturday on the flight from Rome that began a six-day journey to Kazakhstan and Armenia.

“We must not let what has happened lead to a deepening of divisions,” the pope said. “Religion must never be used as a reason for conflict.”

This largely secular former Soviet republic welcomed the pope’s message with displays of its aspired-to identity as a tolerant bridge between East and West, Islam and Christianity.

Kazakhstan’s 16.7 million people are divided into a roughly even number of Muslims and Orthodox Christians of Russian descent and about 180,000 Roman Catholics, mainly of German, Polish and Ukrainian origin.

Absattar Derbassaliev, grand mufti of Kazakhstan’s Muslims, sat Sunday in the VIP section near the altar, which was sheltered by a soaring sky-blue canopy shaped like a yurt, or felt tent. Muslims made up a sizable portion of the more than 10,000 people in Astana’s Mother of the Homeland Square, drawn more to see the 81-year-old spiritual globe-trotter than to pray.

Later, President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev received John Paul at an ornate reception hall that resembles a room at France’s Versailles Palace except for a large portrait of Ablai Khan, the 18th century ruler who united the Kazakh tribes.

In the evening, a male Muslim law student and a woman who leads the Catholic Students Society addressed the pope--she also planted a kiss on his left cheek--amid a tumultuous welcome at Eurasian University, home to 8,000 students from more than 50 ethnic groups.

Nazarbayev ordered state television to broadcast the Mass live and told the pope he was deeply touched by the prayer for peace. He assured his visitor that the ideal of unity under one God is state policy in Kazakhstan, where 46 churches are promised freedom of worship under a post-Soviet constitution modeled on that of France.

The Kazakh leader reiterated his government’s willingness to join a U.S.-led alliance in the fight against terrorism “because no country, no matter how big, can fight terrorism on its own.” He thanked John Paul for making the long-planned visit despite the Sept. 11 attacks, which had raised concerns about the pope’s security.

A military helicopter circled over the Mass site here on the flat Kazakh steppes as worshipers began gathering before dawn in a chilly north wind from Siberia. Police with metal detectors screened everyone.

“What has happened has shocked the world so much that people need his words of hope and love and faith,” said Zinova Bigaliyeva, 42, a cellist who traveled 20 hours by bus and train from the neighboring country of Kyrgyzstan to attend.

Sibir Toley, 55, a Muslim who works in the Kazakh civil service as a labor inspector, said he came to see the pope “because he is a courageous man who has earned our respect.” Toley stood side by side with Christians, who nodded in agreement.

Many Kazakhs voiced hope that their country would resist a tide of Islamic extremism that has brought bloodshed and religious intolerance to some of its neighbors. “People here never held fanatical religious attitudes as they do in some other countries,” said Mikhail Lapshin, an ethnic Russian student in the audience at Eurasian University.

“No one is immune from such conflicts,” said Kuat Zhakypbayev, a Kazakh Muslim student. “God knows what could happen here. But I think everything will be OK here. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t stay.”

John Paul offered the students encouragement.

“It is an important time for the world, because in people’s minds there is a growing conviction that we cannot go on living divided as we are,” he told about 650 students who jammed an auditorium and hundreds more listening over loudspeakers in the street. “I urge you to work for a more united world. . . . The path your country takes will be determined by your choices.”