Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 3, 1995 TAG: 9507030091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PRESOV, SLOVAKIA LENGTH: Medium
\ Standing in the rain at a monument to Protestant martyrs, Pope John Paul II sought Sunday to heal age-old wounds from Europe's religious wars that were rubbed raw by his canonization of three Roman Catholic priests.
The five-minute stop on a street corner to commemorate the massacre of 24 Calvinists was a last-minute addition to the pope's four-day trip to Slovakia.
It was added after thousands of Protestants protested Saturday, saying the canonization of the priests, who also were killed in the 17th-century wars, was one-sided.
``We really appreciate this gesture,'' Jan Midriak, the Evangelical bishop of eastern Slovakia, said. ``We think that history up to now has been interpreted one-sidedly, because the 17th century was an extremely hard time for both faiths. People died on both sides, and it was very right that the pope recognized that there were cruelties on both sides.''
Spokesman Joaquin Navarro said the pope's visit to the Protestant memorial, where about 5,000 people had gathered the day before, was intended ``to render justice and heal old wounds.''
The pope came to eastern Slovakia on Sunday to declare the three priests - Hungarian Stephan Pongracz, Mark Kirzevcanin of Croatia and Melchor Grodziecki of Poland - saints during a Mass attended by 300,000 people at the airport in Kosice.
The priests were tortured by soldiers of a Calvinist prince. Two were beheaded and the third disemboweled.
Protestants argued the canonization did not take into account Protestants who also died for their faith.
The pope is intent on bringing Christians closer as he leads the Catholic church toward the next millennium. His attention to Protestant sensibilities on Sunday capped a week of reaching out to other faiths.
The pope's final public event Sunday was a prayer service, in drenching rain, for Eastern Rite Catholics. The church, loyal to the pope, was suppressed by Czechoslovakia's Communist regime in the 1950s; the government tried to make it part of the Orthodox church.
When the Eastern Rite Catholics got back their confiscated churches and property after Communism fell in 1989, the Orthodox were alienated. The pontiff urged renewed unity, quoting from his recent encyclical, which advocates better relations between faiths.
by CNB