Papal Visit To Czech Republic Met With Protestant Protest Religious Leaders Object To Sainthood Of Priest Considered A Traitor
Returning to a country that ferociously repressed religion under communism and has largely ignored it in its wake, Pope John Paul II on Saturday appealed for unity among Christians divided by historic hatreds.
Not everybody heeded the appeal in a country where Protestant-Catholic antagonisms have steeped for centuries.
John Paul’s reception in Prague on a gray, blustery day was marred by a Protestant protest against the elevation to sainthood of Jan Sarkander, an early 17th-century Roman Catholic priest. Sarkander died in prison at the hands of Protestants who considered him a traitor for helping invading Poles.
Outraged by the canonization that will take place today in the provincial city of Olomouc, the president of the Czech association of Protestant churches and another Protestant leader pointedly skipped an ecumenical meeting with the pope on Saturday afternoon. Fifteen other Protestants and a representative of Czech Jews did attend and chatted briefly with John Paul.
The pope, on a three-day visit that will include a few stolen hours in his Polish homeland, hailed fledgling attempts to narrow the gap between Catholics and Protestants that was opened by savage religious wars beginning in the 16th century.
“I come as a pilgrim of peace and love. The tragic events of past centuries must help to establish a new attitude and new relationships,” he told Czech President Vaclav Havel after arriving on a flight from Rome.
Displaying the high spirits that surface as soon as he escapes from straitjacket Vatican life, John Paul told reporters traveling on his plane that, in the end, brash young communism simply could not compete against Eastern Europe’s deep Christian roots.
“The past 1,000 years weigh more than the 40 terrible years. That is good,” John Paul said.
There has been a Catholic diocese in Prague since A.D. 983, but in Communist Czechoslovakia all churches endured ferocious attack. Catholic bishops and priests were murdered, jailed and exiled; churches, schools, hospitals and land were seized by the state. Only the churches have been returned.
On John Paul’s first visit to Prague, in 1990 - soon after Vatican-Czechoslovak relations were restored after nearly 40 years of rupture - hundreds of thousands of people filled downtown streets to hear the pontiff hail a “church coming out of the catacombs, after great sufferings, persecutions and deprivations.”
Saturday’s crowds were far smaller. In the years since, as the Czech Republic and Slovakia amicably parted into separate nations, the 10 million Czechs have turned more to the Western-style materialism John Paul often berates than to the restored religious freedom he celebrates.
The Vatican says 38 percent of Czechs are Catholics, but a poll by one Prague magazine last year put the number at 20 percent. Other faiths collectively attract only a few percent. The majority of Czechs, like their president, do not profess any religious affiliation.
On Saturday, Havel reminded the pope of changing times. In 1990, he said, the papal visit was “a great feast of spiritual freedom making us keenly aware of the opening of a door that had so long been closed to us.”
Now, said the poet-president, enthusiasm for newly recovered freedom has given way to “more sober thinking about everyday life with its everyday cares.”