Vilnius: Pope Francis began a Baltic tour in Catholic Lithuania on Saturday, honouring victims of the region’s Nazi and Soviet occupations as the Church scrambles to contain the fallout from fresh clerical abuse scandals.
The four-day trip to the northeastern edge of the European Union and Nato alliance brings him geographically close to Russia, where Vatican diplomats have been trying for years to arrange a papal visit.
The pontiff will travel to mainly Protestant Latvia on Monday and secular Estonia on Tuesday as all three Baltic states mark 100 years of independence this year.
“It has been a century marked by your bearing numerous trials and suffering; detentions, deportations and even martyrdom,” Francis told Catholic faithful who waved yellow, green and red national flags as they greeted him in Vilnius.
The last century of Baltic history was marked by the Nazi invasion — which wiped out almost all of the region’s Jews — and then decades of Soviet occupation during the Cold War.
Behind the Iron Curtain, the Catholic Church played a key role in the non-violent anti-Soviet resistance, especially in Lithuania, the only Catholic-majority country of the three.
As a result, it was persecuted with both priests and bishops killed by totalitarian authorities.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite called the pope’s visit a “precious gift” for the centennial.
Vilnius estimates that more than 50,000 Lithuanians died in camps, prisons, and during deportations between 1944 and 1953. Another 20,000 partisans and supporters were killed in anti-Soviet guerilla warfare. — AFP
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