POPE ENJOYS A DAY OFF AT WIGRY'S OLD CAMALDOLESE MONASTERY

VATICAN CITY, JUN 9, 1999 (VIS) - Today Pope John Paul is at the Old Camaldolese Monastery in Wigry, a town of 200 people located near the lake of the same name in the Wigierski National Park, where he arrived in mid-afternoon yesterday. He is enjoying a day free from public ceremonies, the only one scheduled during the 13-day visit to his native land, and will leave tomorrow morning for Siedlce, where he will celebrate Mass.

The Pope's day off follows three days of intense activities in which he celebrated four Masses, one beatification and two acts of devotion to the Sacred Heart, addressed the country's scientists and academicians and blessed Poland's Marian shrine at Lichen. This shrine was badly damaged in World War II. The building of a new one began in 1994 and will be completed by the year 2000, which marks the 150th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady in Lichen. At more than 120 meters (394 feet) long, 77 wide (253 feet) and 85.5 (281 feet) high, it will be the largest church in the country, the seventh largest in Europe and the eleventh biggest in the world. Its bell-tower will be 128 meters (420 feet) high.

The Camaldolese arrived in Poland in 1605 and built six monasteries, of which two remain today. Wigry was considered to be the richest and most beautiful in Poland, and perhaps even of the entire Congregation.

The Wigry Monastery, where the Holy Father is a guest, was built in 1668 on land belonging to King Jan Kazimierz and used by him as a hunting reserve. Soon afterwards, people started to come to this area and villages and farms arose around the monastery. In 1800 the Camaldolese were expelled by the Prussian authorities, never to return, and the complex fell into ruin.

The Baroque church, however, built between 1694 and 1745, became part of the local diocese. Following the restoration of the entire complex and the creation of a new village on the site of the former monastery, it became a parish church and today serves about 2,500 persons. The hermitage itself belongs to the Polish Ministry of Cultural Patrimony.

Wigry Lake, 17.5 kilometers long and 3.5 wide, is the largest of the 41 lakes in this recently-established national park, and is one of the largest and deepest in Poland. The name of the s-shaped lake comes from a Lithuanian word - "wingri" - meaning crooked. In fact, at one point, the territory comprising this lake region belonged to the Jascwinghi peoples, of Lithuanian, Prussian and Latvian origin.

In 1410 this territory had become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which, from 1445 to 1569 shared a common monarch with Poland. It then became part of a federative state with the Kingdom of Poland from 1569 to 1795, the year that saw the end of the Polish-Lithuanian state when it was partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria. In 1920 Wigry became part of the Polish state.

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