c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as Yugoslavia moved toward accepting terms for ending the war over Kosovo, Pope John Paul II expressed hope Thursday (June 3) for peace in the Balkans and gave his support to a U.N. peacekeeping role.

Annan flew to Rome from New York at the invitation of the Roman Catholic pontiff. Since the beginning of the conflict March 24, John Paul has used all the moral force at his command to try to halt both the forced exodus of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and NATO’s retaliatory bombing.

In a homily prepared for tonight’s celebration of the feast of Corpus Domini, John Paul called for prayers for”the nearby land of the Balkans where too much innocent blood has been spilled already and too many offenses have been committed against the dignity and the rights of men and peoples.” Informed just before Annan’s arrival that the Yugoslav Parliament had voted to approve the peace plan worked out by Russian, U.S. and European envoys, he added words of cautious optimism to his text:”Our prayer is comforted this evening by the perspectives of hope that finally seem to be opening.” Annan arrived at the Vatican as former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari were negotiating in Belgrade to win Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s endorsement of the peace plan.

Annan, who was accompanied by U.N. Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast and Elizabeth Lindenmayer, his special assistant, spent almost two hours at the Vatican.

After talking privately, the pope and the secretary general sat down at a long, highly polished oak table in the pope’s study with Annan’s aides and with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, who acts as the Vatican’s foreign minister.

A Vatican film showed the pope at the head of the table, reading what appeared to be a detailed statement on the Balkan crisis.

The meeting continued over a working lunch, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said, with the talks centering on the”grave situation existing in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Particular consideration was reserved for the humanitarian drama of the Kosovar populations and the necessity for a negotiated solution respecting both history and law.””The Holy Father,”he said,”illustrated the stated position of the Holy See on the conflict in course, underlining the suitability that, under the aegis of the United Nations, the cessation of hostilities be accompanied by the simultaneous return of the refugees in the region of Kosovo with the aid of an international peacekeeping force accepted by all the parties.” Praising the United Nation’s role in the international community, the pope”expressed his hope for even greater U.N. activity in the prevention and containment of conflicts,”the spokesman said.

Although the pope announced last Sunday that he planned to devote the Feast of Corpus Domini to prayers for peace in the Balkans, Annan’s visit to the Vatican came as a surprise.

Navarro-Valls said Wednesday (June 2) the pope had expressed the desire to meet with the U.N. leader”to examine the situation and propose ways or means to resolve the crisis and construct peace in the Balkans.” Annan, who called the meeting”an important opportunity to exchange views on the moral and political issues of the crisis in Kosovo,”arrived in Rome at midmorning and left for London en route to New York in late afternoon. Before going to the Vatican, he called on Italy’s new president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, at the Quirinal Palace.

John Paul said last Sunday during a visit to the Italian port city of Ancona, across the Adriatic Sea from the former Yugoslavia, that he wanted to raise”a choral invocation for peace”from the Church of Rome on Corpus Domini.

He invited all Romans _”clergy, religious and the faithful”_ to join him in the celebration of the Corpus Domini Mass on the broad steps of the Roman Basilica of St. John in Lateran and the traditional procession along the broad, tree-lined Via Merulana to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

The feast honors what Catholics consider to be the”real presence of Christ”in the Eucharist, and the pope leads the procession, kneeling on the flat bed of a small motor vehicle and elevating the host displayed in a sacred vessel called a monstrance.

As part of his Corpus Domini peace offensive, the pope also dispatched the three top prelates in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to the Balkans to mark the feast by carrying his”message of fraternal reconciliation and just peace”to Catholic communities, refugees and other victims of the conflict, the Vatican said.

Archbishop Van Thuan Francois Xavier Nguyen, the council president, went to Belgrade; Bishop Diarmuid Martin, secretary, to Macedonia; and Monsignor Giampaolo Crepaldi, under secretary, to Albania. The Vatican said they also would meet with religious, government and aid officials.

DEA END POLK