AUDIENCE TO LITHUANIAN AND ITALIAN PILGRIMS

VATICAN CITY, MAR 4, 2000 (VIS) - This morning in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father received in a joint audience 3,000 Lithuanian faithful, on the feast day of their patron, St. Casimir, and 2,000 pilgrims from the Italian diocese of Cremona, all of whom are on a Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome.

Addressing the Lithuanians in their own language, the Pope recalled his 1993 pastoral visit to their country and underscored how "Lithuania was the last of the Baltic countries to become Christian and the only one to remain faithful to the Catholic Church in the period of the Lutheran reformation. Let us thank God for the fidelity of the Lithuanian people to the Church and the Successor of Peter."

"Today," he affirmed, "having re-obtained civil and religious freedom, Lithuania has found its place in the heart of the European family. Freedom involves responsibilities: Your nation, dear Lithuanians, with its cultural patrimony, enhanced by the sufferings undergone in the heroic fidelity to the Christian vocation, is called to contribute to the spiritual renewal of Europe and to reconciliation among peoples."

"Modern man," added John Paul II, "needs the Gospel more than ever in order to walk on the path of truth, freedom, justice and peace. He needs it above all to know God and to know himself."

"You have come to Rome," he then said, turning to the pilgrims from Cremona, "to cross over the Holy Door. It is a very beautiful experience which, here, in the heart of the Catholic world, on the tomb of the Apostle Peter and on the soil bathed on the blood of the first martyrs, asks to be deeply lived. The words of Jesus 'I am with you all the days', is the mainstay of the Christian, who becomes a penitent pilgrim to obtain a strengthening of faith, hope and charity."

AC;LITHUANIA; CREMONA;...;...;VIS;20000306;Word: 300;