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Pope Urges Reconciliation in Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- With the war-shattered buildings of Beirut behind him, Pope John Paul II celebrated an outdoor Mass on Sunday, bringing a message of peace and reconciliation to Lebanon.


More than 300,000 people crowded into and around a 34-acre field for the Mass, and thousands more lined the roads that the pope's convoy passed as he entered Beirut from the Christian town of Junieh to the north.


Many in the crowd shouted "Baba, Baba," Arabic for pope. The pontiff spoke in Arabic when he opened the Mass on Beirut's Mediterranean seafront.


"Salaam aleikum," or "Peace be upon you," John Paul said.


The Mass site was a landfill of leveled garbage and rubble from the war.


"I am certain that the sufferings of the past years will not be in vain," he said in his homily. "They will strengthen your freedom and unity."


The pope released a major document designed to unify and guide the Lebanese Catholic churches. It was a response to the conclusions of a meeting of Lebanese bishops at the Vatican two years ago. The bishops had demanded the departure of Syria's 40,000 troops and Israeli forces occupying 10 percent of southern Lebanon.


John Paul stopped short of making such an explicit call but endorsed it and embraced other concerns of Lebanon's Christians.


"I am aware of the current great difficulties: the threatening occupation of the south of Lebanon, the economic plight of the country, the presence of non-Lebanese forces on the territory," he said in the document.


The pope also took note of the "problem of refugees, and also the danger of extremism and the impression that some are frustrated in their rights."


The document, mainly aimed at bolstering the country's more than 1 million Christians, also seeks to give heart to all Lebanese.


The pope called on them to forgive, unite and take part in political and civic life and together rebuild a country torn by the 1975-90 civil war.


On Saturday night, nearly 20,000 young people gave him a raucous and joyful reception at the Maronite Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in the hills of the Christian heartland north of Beirut.


But many in the youthful crowd shouted demands for Lebanon's independence. A young man selected to deliver a speech to the pope spoke bitterly of the plight of the Christians, who lost political power in the war and whose dominance before it was one of the war's causes.


Pierre Najm told the pontiff that Christians were "truly troubled" by their lack of influence in political decisions in postwar Lebanon.


"We ask you, you who have come to bring hope, to dare to say in a loud voice what we fear to say," said Najm, who appeared to be in his 20s.


Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said a more explicit call for Syrian and Israeli withdrawal "was not needed" because of the pope's frequent urgings for Lebanese independence.


On Sunday, the pope drove in a limousine along curvy roads from the mountain fastness where Maronite Catholics first took refuge in Lebanon in the 4th century. The Maronites, Lebanon's largest Christian sect, were then considered heretics by other Catholics but reconciled with the Vatican centuries ago.

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