August 25, 1997
1 Million Turn Out for Mass in Paris
By CRAIG R. WHITNEY
PARIS -- Drawing on deep reserves of strength that amazed critics, Pope John Paul II and the Roman Catholic Church in France ended a six-day youth festival Sunday with a three-hour, open-air Mass that drew a million people, twice as many as originally expected, despite searing 94-degree heat.
"Your journey does not end here," John Paul told a crowd of hymn-singing young people from 160 countries who had spent all night spread out over the 135 acres of Longchamp Race Track after a three-hour baptismal ceremony for 10 of them over which the pope presided the night before.
The crowd, 750,000 strong on Saturday night, swelled even further Sunday morning under a grueling sun that sent 96 people from the race track to hospitals with heat exhaustion and sunstroke.
"Continue to contemplate God's glory and God's love," the pope told them, "and you will receive the enlightenment needed to build the civilization of love, to help our brothers and sisters to see the world transfigured by eternal wisdom and love."
He announced that in October he would make a French saint, Therese de Lisieux, a doctor of the church, a title reserved for those whose teachings and spirituality have profoundly influenced the church. The 19th-century Carmelite nun, who is one of the patron saints of France, would be the 33rd person named doctor of the church but only the third woman.
The pope, 77, looked by turns frail and preoccupied, or rejuvenated and touched by the enthusiasm of the crowd, the largest part of whom were from France, once proud to be considered the "eldest daughter of the church" but uncertain at the end of a troubled 20th century how much life remained in her.
In a country where almost all Christians are baptized into the Catholic Church, few regularly attend Sunday services. And although 85 percent of the French say they are Catholics, few pay attention to the church's strictures against birth control.
The overwhelming impression is of a society governed by secular rather than sacred values, inward-turning and cranky about its ability to compete against other societies in the global economy.
But there was a change in mood in recent days as tens of thousands of the pilgrims John Paul had called to the 12th World Youth Day to bear witness to their faith filled Paris with a polyglot babble of African, Asian and European languages as they admired its glories.
All had in common an uncommon respect for this pope who goes against the modern grain, a sentiment many of their French hosts now found encouragement to say they shared.
"I am studying science at the University in Brest, and I like this pope and what he says very much," said one of them, Tanneguy Biseau, a 20-year-old aspiring naval officer from Pont Aven in Brittany.
"This event tells me that I'm not alone and gives me spiritual encouragement," he said, directing pedestrian traffic through the Bois de Boulogne to the race track, the site of an abbey in medieval times.
Laura Haftek, the youth minister of St. Catherine's Church in Ringwood, N.J., said most of her delegation from the Paterson Diocese had come to see the pope. "This is what they wanted," she said laughing, "walking in a mob, sleeping under the stars, meeting other kids from around the world."
At the baptismal ceremony on Saturday night in the stadium, the pope also took a further step toward reconciliation with Protestants in France by mentioning the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 3,000 Huguenots, which took place during the Wars of Religion exactly 425 years ago this weekend.
"On the eve of the 24th of August we cannot forget the sad massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, an event of very obscure causes in the political and religious history of France," he said.
"Christians did things which the Gospel condemns," he added, not offering an apology that would make the church assume responsibility for the event but observing that "acknowledging the weaknesses of the past is an act of honesty and courage which helps us to strengthen our faith."
"I am convinced that only forgiveness, offered and received, leads little by little to a fruitful dialogue, which will in turn insure a fully Christian reconciliation," he said. "Belonging to different religious traditions must not constitute today a source of opposition and tension."
Though his voice often quavered with fatigue and he was visibly bent with age, the pope's determination was as strong as ever during his visit.
He insisted on visiting the grave of a friend and a leader of the anti-abortion movement in France, the late Prof. Jerome Lejeune, Friday afternoon, but both the pope and the church muted criticism by saying nothing about the visit in public and keeping visitors away.
France's Socialist Party condemned the visit to the grave as an incitment to militant groups intolerant of abortion, which has been legal in France since 1975.
Sunday evening, as the thunderclouds that held off all week finally closed in, Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin bade the pope farewell as he left for Rome, but he did not mention the controversy in his public remarks.
Instead, Jospin thanked the pope for beatifying Frederic Ozanam, a 19th-century layman who founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and agitated for social justice in the face of the inequalities of 19th-century capitalism. The ceremony took place on Friday at Notre Dame Cathedral.
Sunday's Mass, accompanied by a choir and an orchestra directed by Myung-Whun Chung, the former director of the Bastille Opera, unfurled with military precision, the pilgrims remaining in their assigned places inside the track even for the distribution of Communion wafers by volunteers protected with bright blue parasols.
Those farthest away were about a mile from the elevated creamy chalk tribunal where the pope and assembled church dignitaries sat, one designed by noted French architects including Christian de Portzamparc, whose wife, Elizabeth, designed the steel altar.
There were enough water and food, and portable toilets, for everyone, and the organizers proudly asserted that the $42 million budget for the event would be fully covered by corporate sponsorships and participation fees -- if everybody paid.
"If the people who haven't paid don't do so between now and the end of the week, the deficit will be several tens of millions of francs it will take us years to make up," said Bishop Michel Dubost, the chief French military chaplain and the president of the organizing committee.
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company