JOHN PAUL II ARRIVES IN GEORGIA ON FIRST EVER VISIT

VATICAN CITY, NOV 8, 1999 (VIS) - At 2:15 this afternoon, after a five and a half hour flight from New Delhi, Pope John Paul arrived in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, on his first visit to this republic in the Caucasus. He was greeted by President Eduard Shevardnadze and by His Holiness Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia.

Georgia, a former Soviet republic which became independent in 1991, has a population of 5.4 million, of whom 100,000 or 1.8 percent are Catholic. The apostolic administration of the Caucasus, established in December of 1993, administers to 50,200 Latin-rite Catholics in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The ordinariate for Armenian Catholics of Eastern Europe also includes Georgia. An ordinariate is an ecclesiastical geographical structure set up for Eastern Catholic communities which do not have their own hierarchy in place.

In his speech at the welcome ceremony, the Holy Father referred to the visits to the Vatican by both President Shevardnadze and Patriarch Ilia II. He thanked the former "for your invitation to come to Georgia," and the latter because, "without your fraternal support I would not be here now to visit the Church over which Your Holiness presides."

"I am deeply moved," he observed, "by the long and glorious history of Christianity in this land." From the early fourth and late fifth centuries, he added, "Christianity became the seed of successive flowerings of Georgian culture, especially in the monasteries; and the Church became the guardian of the nation's identity which was so often threatened."

"Set between East and West," he continued, "the Church in Georgia has always been open to contacts with other Christian peoples. At times, the bonds between the Georgian Church and the See of Rome have been deep and strong; and, though at other times there have been tensions, the awareness of our common Christian vocation has never faded completely."

John Paul II, in concluding remarks, pointed out that "Christianity has contributed much to Georgia's past and it must contribute no less to its future. Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ... an event which symbolically opened a new era in the life of many countries. An atheistic ideology had sought in vain to weaken or even eliminate from this land the religious faith of its people. The followers of all religions suffered serious opposition. Today we must admire and give thanks for the witness of your perseverance."

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