"Pope Benedict XVI will defend the European Christian roots during his pastoral visit to Croatia, a majority Catholic country whose leadership wants the integration into the European Union," the France Presse news agency reported on Friday.
Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See Press Office, was quoted by the Vatican Television centre as saying that the central moments of the pontiff's stay in Zagreb will be his meeting with the youth on Saturday evening and an open-air mass on the occasion of the first national meeting of Catholic families on Sunday.
The Church also serves the human and Croatian community which, since it has weathered the turbulent period of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, is now preparing, as it enters the European Union, for deeper involvement in the community of European nations. The Pope wishes and encourages this to happen, bringing the wealth of culture and the grand tradition of the Croatian people, said Lombardi.
Benedict XVI would like to strengthen ties which his predecessor John Paul II established with that country with a 4.5 million population and Catholics accounting for 90 percent, spokesman Lombardi said.
Media report that the pope's wish for Croatia to assume its niche in the EU is coming at the time when enthusiasm over the EU membership has weakened due to despondency caused by guilty verdicts the UN tribunal in The Hague delivered against two Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac.
"The focus of Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Zagreb, Croatia, June 4-5 will be on the family and building a community with Christian values," the Catholic News Service reported.
"In the 84-year-old pope's 19th trip abroad and his 13th to a European country, he also will continue to underline the importance he places on reviving Europe's Christian roots."
"Croatia is a different country from the one Blessed Pope John Paul II visited in 1994, 1998 and 2003. The late pope went at critical moments in Croatia's evolution: first as the country was engaged in its 1991-1995 war of independence from Yugoslavia, and then as it sought to rebuild a democratic nation that was still scarred by religious and ethnic tensions," the CNS news agency writes.
"Blessed John Paul told the nation in 2003 that Christianity was the answer to its challenges because it offers nations the solid foundations of universally shared values, such as respect for human life and dignity, religious freedom and solidarity -- a message that Pope Benedict will likely repeat," it says.