c. 2004 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) A frail Pope John Paul II, celebrating an outdoor Mass in honor of the Virgin Mary at the French shrine of Lourdes, made an urgent appeal to the world Sunday (Aug. 15) to respect “the sacred gift of life.”
John Paul spoke four days after the British government announced its decision to allow cloning of human embryos for stem cell research aimed at finding cures for such diseases as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. The Vatican opposes any form of human cloning on moral and ethical grounds.
The pope’s voice was hoarse and faltering, and he stopped frequently to catch his breath, but his message was clear. The more than 300,000 pilgrims attending the Mass responded with prolonged applause.
“I appeal urgently to all of you, dear brothers and sisters, to do everything in your power to ensure that life, each and every life, will be respected from conception to its natural end. Life is a sacred gift, and no one can presume to be its master.”
The pope has repeatedly stated his opposition to abortion and euthanasia, but the urgency of his new appeal apparently was in response to the British action. The World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations called on Catholic doctors and researchers on Thursday (Aug. 12) to lobby for a ban on any cloning of human embryos and to concentrate research on adult stem cells.
John Paul was to wind up his two-day visit to Lourdes and fly back to Rome in the early evening after meeting at lunch with leaders of the French Episcopal Conference at the Accueil Notre-Dame, the residence for sick and disabled pilgrims where he was staying. The trip was his 104th outside Italy in his almost 26 years as pope, his seventh to France and second to Lourdes, which he first visited exactly 21 years ago.
The 84-year-old pontiff presided over the Mass in a spacious park near the cave of Massabielle, where 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous claimed she had visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858. Because of the visions, Lourdes is the most important of the world’s Marian shrines, visited each year by 6 million tourists in search of healing.
John Paul began his visit Saturday by praying in the cave and drinking its spring water and was to return for private prayers before his departure Sunday.
The Mass marked both the 150th anniversary of the proclamation by Pope Pius IX of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and Sunday’s Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception holds that the Virgin was conceived without the stain of original sin that has afflicted mankind since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Catholic Church believes that because of her Immaculate Conception, Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven when her earthly life ended.
There is usually a large ecumenical presence at Masses on papal trips, but the Federation of French Protestant Churches said its members were not invited and would not have attended because “they do not recognize the Marian piety nor a Christianity subjected to the authority of the pope.” Protestants object to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception on the grounds that the Bible makes no mention of it.
John Paul has had a special devotion to Mary since childhood and has said he believes that she saved his life by deflecting bullets fired at him by a would-be assassin in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.
“By her words and her silence the Virgin Mary stands before us as a model for our pilgrim way,” the pope said in his homily. “It is not an easy way: As a result of the fall of our first parents, humanity is marked by the wounds of sin whose consequences continue to be felt also among the redeemed. But evil and death will not have the last word! Mary confirms this by her whole life, for she is a living witness of the victory of Christ, our Passover.”
The pope said that from the cave of Massabielle Mary speaks also to Christians of the third millennium, giving meaning to the lives of young people and issuing “a special call to women.”
“Appearing here, Mary entrusted her message to a young girl, as if to emphasize the special mission of women in our own time, tempted as it is by materialism and secularism: to be in today’s society a witness of those essential values which are seen only with the eyes of the heart,” John Paul said.
The pope, dressed in gold vestments, sat on a wheeled gold and white throne during the Mass, looking tired but determined. He suffers from the neurological disorder Parkinson’s disease and arthritis. At the start of the Mass he blessed water from a spring in the cave, which was then sprinkled on the worshippers to recall their baptisms.
DEA/PH END POLK
