Krakow Crowd Urges Pontiff to Stay

Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass here Sunday for more than 2 million people, as the largest crowd of all his homeland pilgrimages gathered for an extraordinary display of mutual affection between an ailing pontiff and a nation he has profoundly shaped.

In a day of deep poignancy, John Paul, 82, made repeated references to his desire to visit Poland again but also to his own mortality.

“I would like to add, ‘Until next time,’ ” he said near the end of the open-air Mass, looking out over a vast sea of humanity gathered in an open field. “But this is entirely in God’s hands.”

And in a homily built around Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you,” John Paul declared: “I embrace with affection my countrymen, particularly the suffering and the sick, those struggling with various difficulties, the unemployed, the homeless, the elderly and the lonely, and families with many children.”

About 1.6 million people fit into the city commons, where a flower-bedecked stage, an altar and huge video screens had been set up, while half a million more were gathered in surrounding streets and on a hillside overlooking the site, police said. Hundreds of thousands of Poles traveled here by bus Saturday. Many thousands carrying backpacks and mats had slept outdoors overnight.

The atmosphere was joyous, despite the tough physical conditions and the fears of some that this might be the pontiff’s last visit home.

John Paul, who played a key role in undermining communism in Poland, warned in his homily of dangers in the new society emerging here, stressing that secularism should not replace the nation’s traditional Roman Catholic faith.

“When the noisy propaganda ... of freedom without truth or responsibility grows stronger in our country too, the shepherds of the church cannot fail to proclaim the one fail-proof philosophy of freedom, which is the truth of the cross of Christ,” he said.

The pontiff also criticized human genetic engineering and euthanasia, complaining that “frequently man lives as if God did not exist, and even puts himself in God’s place.”

A prayer read during the Mass asked God to heal “the sorrow of nations in the darkness of wars and the suffering of people who are threatened with hunger and terrorism.”

Later, Krakow Archbishop Franciszek Macharski told reporters that “the Holy Father knows that the fate of the twin towers on Sept. 11 in New York is what the world can come to” without God.

As the morning service drew to a close, the crowd chanted, “Stay with us!” Many well-wishers have cried out this phrase on the pope’s eight previous visits to Poland since his elevation in 1978. This time he replied, half-jokingly yet overcome by emotion, “Well, you are trying to persuade me to abandon Rome!”

At an afternoon visit to a church where he worked as a young priest, John Paul said, “I’m asking for a prayer for those who are alive and for those who are dead, and for the pope, during his lifetime and after his death.”

Then, Sunday evening--in perhaps the most moving moment of the day--John Paul greeted a crowd of mostly young people from a window of the church residence where he is staying. As he appeared, the crowd sang, “We love you! Hallelujah! We welcome you! Hallelujah!”

The first words from the pontiff, who was scheduled to return to Rome today, were: “Unfortunately, this is a farewell meeting.”

The crowd responded, “No!” But the pope broke into song, using different words but the same tune they had been singing.

“We bid you farewell, hallelujah!” he sang in a faltering voice. “We bid you farewell, hallelujah! We bid you farewell. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! We bid you farewell.”

John Paul pledged “my heart and my thoughts, forever.”

He went on: “The farewell wish to one who departs is, ‘May you come again.’ I wish this to myself too. I do think that this is your wish to me.... May God bless you.”

Earlier in the evening, the pope visited the Rakowice Cemetery, where he blessed the graves of his parents and older brother. He prayed briefly and lighted a candle but did not get out of his popemobile. He also visited the Wawel Cathedral, where he celebrated his first Mass as a priest in 1946.

During Sunday’s outdoor Mass, John Paul beatified three Polish priests and a Polish nun. They included an archbishop of Warsaw, Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski, who was exiled to the interior of Russia for 20 years after he openly defended participants in an unsuccessful 1863 uprising against czarist rule.

“Archbishop Felinski gave himself fully in defending the freedom of the nation,” John Paul said. “This is necessary today also.”

Many Poles credit John Paul himself with having played the key role in freeing their country from Russian and Communist control through the inspiration of his early visits here as pope, the first in 1979.

His role in bringing democracy to Poland was even greater than that of the Solidarity trade union that led the anti-Communist struggle, said Romuald Siwiec, 45, a businessman in the crowd Sunday morning.

In the mid-1970s, “nobody could imagine there might be a change in the system, a change in the whole world,” explained Siwiec’s wife, Barbara Piga, 45, who as a student had seen John Paul during his first trip home as pope. “He gave people the faith that they could do it and that it was worth doing.”

In his homily, John Paul also called on his countrymen to show greater love and charity toward those who have fallen behind during Poland’s economic transformation.

“We [should] be aware of the neighbor by our side who feels a sense of abandonment, of being lost, of distrust, because of the loss of work, home, the possibility to maintain his family in a decent manner and to educate his children,” he said.

Robert Wapiennik, 25, an unemployed computer specialist who came to the outdoor Mass, said he wanted to hear John Paul “to get spiritual guidance from him for the coming years of my life.”

Wapiennik said he was thankful for John Paul’s historical role, despite his own current economic problems.

“I’m a free man,” he explained. “If there were no Polish pope, I don’t think those changes would have taken place, or they would have come much later. The pope came to Poland and somehow managed to move the people, to inspire them. I think because of that, people themselves made the change.”

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Ela Kasprzycka of The Times’ Warsaw Bureau contributed to this report.