30,000 attend Pope's first Ukraine Mass

A crowd of 20,000-30,000 turned out in a chilly drizzle today for Pope John Paul’s first Mass in Ukraine

The Pontiff hopes his trip to this predominantly Orthodox nation will help mend a 1,000-year-old rift in Christianity and even pave the way for his long-desired trip to Russia.

Organisers had predicted that up to 350,000 worshippers would attend and were disappointed with the low attendance.

They blamed the poor weather, the distant location of the Mass site on an airfield on the outskirts of Kiev and fears of large crowds, said Kenneth Nowakowski, a spokesman for the papal delegation.

Before the Mass, John Paul circled slowly through the crowd in his glass-enclosed, bulletproof popemobile, worshippers jogging alongside to catch a view or take a photograph of the 81-year-old pontiff.

Amid a sea of umbrellas, worshippers held up cloth banners imploring ‘‘Strengthen Our Faith’’ and ‘‘Bless Ukraine.’’ Others held up their national flags, from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and other nations.

The distant site had been chosen over the soccer stadium in central Kiev, which can seat 100,000, so it could accommodate larger crowds. But worshippers had been warned in advance that buses would take them only to the vicinity of the airfield, and they would have to walk the last three miles.

In his homily, the Pope traced the Christian history of Ukraine, describing the nation as a land ‘‘drenched with the blood of martyrs.’’

He especially praised the Roman Catholic priests and nuns who made personal sacrifices to sustain Catholicism ‘‘in the dark times of the Communist terror.’’

Addressing himself to the young, he also delivered a message he has often made on visits to his native Poland and other countries in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: People should not be seduced by appeals to western consumerism.

‘‘You, dear young people, be brave and free. Do not let yourselves be taken in by the seductive mirages of an easy happiness. Follow the way of Christ.’’

The Pope arrived in Ukraine yesterday for a five-day visit on the invitation of President Leonid Kuchma and his own Latin and Eastern Rite Catholics, a large minority of some six million.

John Paul hopes that a rapprochement with Orthodox in Ukraine could lead to a historic pilgrimage to Moscow, capping his efforts for reconciliation between the western and eastern branches of Christianity.

But Orthodox leaders have flatly rejected his overtures, and planned to boycott a meeting later today between the Pope and leaders of Ukrainian religious denominations.

Moscow Patriarch Alexy II suggested that the papal visit to Ukraine where most Orthodox parishes are tied with the Moscow church could even make matters worse.

The nearly 1,000-year-old, East-West split in Christianity is particularly acute in Ukraine, considered the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy.

Prince Vladimir, the leader of the nation then known as Kievan Rus who was later made a saint, introduced Christianity as the official state religion in 988.

In the 16th century, when Ukraine was under Polish Catholic rule, many Orthodox declared loyalty to the pope though they retained Orthodox ritual.

The so-called Eastern Rite Catholics were considered a nationalist threat to Soviet rule, and dictator Josef Stalin persecuted the church’s followers and turned over its property to the Orthodox.

Attempts by Eastern Rite Catholics, who number some five million today, to regain their property have led to violence in some cases.

In spite of the tension, some Orthodox believers attended the papal Mass today.