HOME TOWN JOYFULLY WELCOMES A REJUVENATED JOHN PAUL II

VATICAN CITY, JUN 16, 1999 (VIS) - A rejuvenated Pope John Paul II, Wadowice's most illustrious son, returned to his home town this afternoon for an exuberant welcome from the city's 19,000 inhabitants, who were joined on the city's main square - which has been renamed Pope John Paul II Square - by an estimated 100,000 people from surrounding areas.

The Pope arrived in Wadowice just before 6 p.m. and first paid a visit to the basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the parish church where he was baptized in 1920 and which is just several meters away from his boyhood home. In the church he greeted a number of people he knew from the past, and then proceeded to a stage erected just outside the church on the square. This is only his third visit to Wadowice since becoming Pope in 1978: He came here in June 1979 and again in August 1991.

Interrupted countless times during his prepared talk by the applause, cheers, songs and laughter of the crowd, which waved handkerchiefs and yellow and white Vatican flags almost continuously, the Holy Father talked off-the-cuff and bantered with his fellow citizens for nearly an hour beyond the scheduled time of the visit. They responded by chanting "Long live the Pope" and "Sto Lat," Polish for "May you live 100 years." When they said "Sto Lat," he replied, "Easier said than done."

In personal reminiscences, he recalled friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors, store owners, and priests as well as the names of streets, schools, stores and theaters, even reciting several lines from "Antigone" and the names of his fellow actors in this drama. The Pope asked if the same bakery existed where he used to buy cream pastries, and remarked that he had "exaggerated" in eating them after his school exams. The crowd responded "yes" and invited him to stay for some pastries.

Pope John Paul also spoke of his mother, who "filled my childhood with love." He said that Wadowice was "where it all began. Life began, School began. Studies began, theater began and the priesthood began."

He referred to the town's Jewish populace, saying he knew many of them "went through difficult times and were exterminated in ghettos, according to Hitler's plans." He said he imagined that his family's Jewish landlord was dead.

"Once again, during my service to the Universal Church in the See of Peter," said John Paul II in his prepared text, "I come to my native town of Wadowice. With great emotion I gaze upon this city of my childhood years, ... the city of my childhood, my family home, the church of my Baptism. I wish to cross these hospitable thresholds, bow before my native soil and its inhabitants, and utter the words of greeting given to family members upon their return from a long journey: 'Praised be Jesus Christ!'"

"With these words I greet all the people of Wadowice, from the elderly, to whom I am linked by the bonds of childhood and adolescence, to the children who are seeing for the first time the Pope who has come to visit them."

He referred to the image of Mary which he would crown after finishing his talk. "The conviction that the Mother of God has a unique role in the life of the Church and of every Christian was always dear to our forefathers. Over the last 100 years the people of Wadowice expressed this in a special way when they gathered to venerate the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and made her the patron of their personal, family and social life."

"During my first visit to Wadowice," the Pope went on, "I asked you to surround me with constant prayer before the image of this Mother. I see that my request has been inscribed in stone. ... Today I thank you warmly for this prayer. I always feel it at work and I ask you to continue to pray for me. I have so much need of your prayer. The Church has need of it. The entire world has need of it."

In concluding remarks, the Holy Father thanked everyone for the newly-built Home for Single Mothers in Wadowice. "Those women who, despite the difficulties and sacrifices, wish to keep the fruit of their motherhood, can find shelter and help there. I am grateful for this great gift of your love for the human person and your concern for life. I am all the more grateful because the home is named after my mother Emilia."

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