POPE THANKS UKRAINIANS FOR THEIR SUFFERINGS FOR THE FAITH

VATICAN CITY, MAY 31, 2000 (VIS) - During the weekly general audience, held this morning in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father had special words for a group of pilgrims from the archdiocese of Lviv of the Latins, Ukraine, led by Archbishop Marian Jaworski. He said he was "moved" and "delighted" by their presence, adding "we are all witnesses of the great works of God and the great signs of Divine Providence."

Speaking Ukrainian, the Pope underlined that their pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul was to express "gratitude to God above all for the gift of the faith received in Baptism and to ask that it be strengthened.

"You know well the value of this gift. For decades you paid for your fidelity to God with suffering and humiliations of various kinds, you were discriminated against and have undergone painful persecutions. It is with emotion that I think of the multitude of laity and ecclesiastics who had the courage and strength to persevere right up to the end next to Christ and His Church, notwithstanding prison, deportation to concentration camps and forced labor camps. How many of them paid with their lives for this fidelity to God, to the Catholic Church and to the Apostolic See. For this the Church today thanks you and your brothers of the Oriental rite."

He asked the faithful "to preserve deep in your memories the witness of these martyrs and transmit it to future generations."

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