ZAGREB, June 22 (Hina) - Pope John Paul II called for forgiveness, reconciliation and reconstruction in a homily during his second pastoral visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina on Sunday, news agencies report.
ZAGREB, June 22 (Hina) - Pope John Paul II called for forgiveness,
reconciliation and reconstruction in a homily during his second
pastoral visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina on Sunday, news agencies
report. #L#
Reuters reports that the pope asked the people of Bosnia-
Herzegovina to heal war wounds and restore their faith in the future
through mutual forgiveness.
The agency also reports the pope delivered the homily at the site of
a Franciscan monastery, destroyed during the 1990s war. Agencies
quote Bosnian Serbs as saying that there had been a priest in the
monastery, Miroslav Filipovic Majstorovic, who had collaborated
with the Ustasha during WWII, and that choosing that location for
today's service was a provocation.
The AFP reports, among other things, that the pope forwarded an
exceptionally warm greeting to the head of the Serb Orthodox
Church, Patriarch Pavle, and members of the Serb Orthodox Church's
Holy Synod.
Austria's APA stresses in its report the pope prayed in public for
forgiveness for crimes committed by Catholic Croats in the past
wars in the Balkans.
The agency says that the Mass, during which layman Ivan Merz was
beatified, was held in Banja Luka, where in 1942 Croatian Ustasha
soldiers killed some 2,700 Serbs, including 500 children.
The agency reports that the Mass was celebrated in the vicinity of
the Franciscan monastery Petricevac, whose member, priest Miroslav
Filipovic Majstorovic, had been a commander of the Croat
concentration camp Jasenovac and had been nicknamed "brother
Satan" because of his cruelty.
During a massacre in 1942, he killed a Serb child, calling on his
fellow fighters to kill. The Vatican changed his status to that of a
layman and after the war the mad former Franciscan was convicted and
executed under Tito's regime, the agency reports.
(hina) rml sb