Pope calls Czechs to the faith despite disbelief

In the southern city of Brno, Pope Benedict XVI told approximately 120,000 faithful that those who exclude God do so at their peril. Said the pontiff, "History has demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions." The pope decried the “wounds” inflicted on the Czech people by decades of atheistic communism. Speaking on September 27 at an outdoor Mass in a field at a local airport, the pope was greeting by cheering throngs coming from the Czech Republic and neighboring countries — such as Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia. Vatican organizers of the event said that they had hoped for a turnout of 200,000 in the greatly secularized country.

This is the pontiff’s first foreign trip since an injury that left him unable to write. He told reporters on the journey from Rome that he has now recovered fully.

The visit to Brno comes on the second day of the pontiff’s sojourn to the Czech homeland. On September 26, he was greeted by President Vaclav Klaus at an airport greeting ceremony where the pope also took the occasion to call Czechs back to their Christian roots. At Brno, Benedict warned that technical progress is not enough to "guarantee the moral welfare of society." Speaking in Italian, the German-born Catholic leader added "Man needs to be liberated from material oppressions, but more profoundly, he must be saved from the evils that afflict the spirit." Giving his traditional Angelus blessing to the throng, the pope urged the faithful not to forget their "rich heritage of faith." Said Benedict, "Maintain the spiritual patrimony inherited from your forebears ... guard it and make it answer to the needs of the present day."

Christianity faces distinct challenges in the Czech Republic, which is experiencing a wave of secularization and disbelief – as is the rest of Europe. Communist-era repression of religion followed Nazi occupation and the Holocaust on Czech soil. During the Second World War, a Catholic priest was the president of the Nazi dominated country.

John Paul II, the current pope’s predecessor visited the former Czechoslovakia thrice. In the Catholic heartland of the Czech Republic, Benedict has received a warm welcome. However, the Czech Republic is one of the most secular countries in Europe, with nearly half the country professing to be nonbelievers. Under communism and Soviet domination, the church was brutally repressed. After seizing power in 1948 in Czechoslovakia, communists seized all church property and persecuted priests. Churches were then allowed to function only under the state's control and supervision. In 1991, 4.5 million of the country's 10 million people said they belonged to a church, while a 2001 census showed that number had dropped to 3.3 million. More recently, polls suggest that about 50 percent of Czech respondents say they are non-believers.