Pope hopes to bring faith to secular Czechs

[lemonbeam]

PRAGUE — Pope Benedict XVI starts his three-day visit to the Czech Republic on Saturday with the hope of restoring faith in the largely secular ex-communist nation where religion was stifled for 40 years. The head of the Roman Catholic Church arrives in Prague shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, a peaceful coup that toppled Communist rule in former Czechoslovakia in 1989.

Religious belief was suppressed throughout the communist regime, which labelled the Church the people’s enemy, put priests under secret police surveillance and banned the Catholic press and Catholic associations. But the fall of communism failed to bring a religious revival, and in 2001 almost six in ten Czechs said in a census they did not identify with any religion, up from 39 percent a decade earlier.

Meanwhile, the percentage of believers tumbled from 43.9 percent to 32.2 percent between 1991 and 2001.

“After going through the dramas of the past century, (the Czech Republic) needs, like the rest of the continent, to rediscover the reasons for faith and for hope,” Pope Benedict said during his Angelus service on Sunday. In the Czech Republic, the pope is also due to discuss European themes, including the historic importance of Christianity and democracy in Europe, his spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

During his first visit to the Czech Republic as pope, Benedict XVI will visit the capital Prague, the south-eastern city of Brno, and Stara Boleslav just outside Prague.
In the Czech capital, Benedict XVI will first go to the Our Lady of Victory Church to donate a golden crown to the Infant Jesus of Prague (Bambino di Praga), a wax statuette worshipped since the 17th century. The pope will then meet Czech politicians and serve an evening prayer at Prague’s St Vitus Cathedral before travelling to Brno where he will serve a Holy Mass for an expected crowd of 150,000 at an airport on Saturday.

The visit will symbolically end with a mass for an estimated 35,000 people in Stara Boleslav on Monday, which is the feast of St Wenceslas, the martyr and patron saint of the country who was murdered in the town on September 28, 935.

google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hyaGyqve627qX0EvAsGOQVCfRL6A

 

[Barzillai]

Vatican web page with texts of the Pope’s addresses (talks, statements) and other documents regarding this visit.

From the Pope’s address upon arriving at Stará Ruzyně International Airport - Prague
Saturday, 26 September 2009:
“Mr President, I know that you wish to see a greater role for religion in this country’s affairs. The Presidential flag flying over Prague Castle proclaims the motto “Pravda Vítězí - the Truth wins”: it is my earnest hope that the light of truth will continue to guide this nation, so blessed throughout its history by the witness of great saints and martyrs.” Full Text

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

When the pope comes to town, a city usually pulls out all the stops. Not so here in the Czech capital, where banners heralding the pope’s visit and large crowds were conspicuously absent. The local newspapers that highlighted the trip seemed more preoccupied with the pope’s penchant for bright red loafers than with the substance of his religious mission.

“If the pope wants to create a religious revival in Europe, there is no worse place he could come to than the Czech Republic, where no one believes in anything,” said Jaroslav Plesl, a self-confessed lapsed Catholic who is deputy editor of Lidove Noviny, a leading daily newspaper here. “Add to that the fact that the pope is German and socially conservative and he might as well be an alien here.”

nytimes.com/2009/09/27/world/europe/27pope.html?ref=global-home

 

[Barzillai]

Here is the full text of the Pope’s address to Czech CIVIL AND POLITICAL AUTHORITIES AND WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS on Saturday, September 26, 2009.

In the talk the Pope said:
“Dear friends, our presence in this magnificent capital, which is often spoken of as the heart of Europe, prompts us to ask in what that “heart” consists. While there is no simple answer to that question, surely a clue is found in the architectural jewels that adorn this city. The arresting beauty of its churches, castle, squares and bridges cannot but draw our minds to God. Their beauty expresses faith; they are epiphanies of God that rightly leave us pondering the glorious marvels to which we creatures can aspire when we give expression to the aesthetic and the noetic aspects of our innermost being. How tragic it would be if someone were to behold such examples of beauty, yet ignore the transcendent mystery to which they point. The creative encounter of the classical tradition and the Gospel gave birth to a vision of man and society attentive to God’s presence among us. In shaping the cultural patrimony of this continent it insisted that reason does not end with what the eye sees but rather is drawn to what lies beyond, that for which we deeply yearn: the Spirit, we might say, of Creation.” (emphasis supplied)