A Road Through the Steppe

The Pope’s visit to the countries of central Asia. In Kazakhstan, before a crowd of Christians and Muslims. And in Armenia, 1,700 years after its conversion to Christianity. “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”

BY ANDREA TORNIELLI

“We must not let what has happened lead to a deepening of divisions. Religion must never be used as a reason for conflict.” John Paul II, more bent and trembling than ever beside the altar in the Square of the Motherland in Astana, added a piece to the texts he had prepared for the Angelus, addressing his words to Our Lady Queen of Peace. His words express his deep concern for what is happening on the international scene after the terrible attacks of September 11th. The Pope knew he was speaking from a country, Kazakhstan, that is still immune from fundamentalism, a country with a Muslim majority where different ethnic groups and religions live in harmony. But his thoughts were running to the southern border, to the area that could become the theater of war any minute.

“I wish to make an earnest call to everyone,” he said in English so that his cry might reach every part of the globe, “to Christians and the followers of other religions, to work together to build a world without violence, a world that loves life, and grows in justice and solidarity.” Then he added, “From this place, I invite both Christians and Muslims to raise an intense prayer to the One, Almighty God whose children we all are, that the supreme good of peace may reign in the world. May people everywhere, strengthened by divine wisdom, work for a civilization of love, in which there is no room for hatred, discrimination, or violence. With all my heart I beg God to keep the world in peace.”

Karol Wojtyla had arrived in Kazakhstan the evening before, met at the airport by a cold, bitter wind. The trip, which had been planned for months, remained uncertain until the last minute. Many people advised the Pope not to go, but he decided differently. From the first moment, the Bishop of Rome spoke to everyone, to the small Catholic minority, to Christians, and also to Muslims. Waiting to greet him at the airport was even the Grand Mufti of Kazakhstan, wearing a white turban and robes of dark green and gold brocade. Their handshake was highly meaningful at a moment when international tension seems about to erupt in a war between the West and Islam. During Mass on Sunday, September 23rd, in front of the altar covered by a structure resembling a Kazakh tent, were 40,000 people. Many of them were Muslims, who came to be present at the rite celebrated by the Pope of Rome. The Pope, pronouncing his homily in Russian, explained that “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” He spoke of the “logic of love” applied above all to the needy, saying that this logic “can bring together Christians and Muslims.”

Communicating a gift
During the meeting with the bishops of central Asia, in the palace of the Apostolic Nunciature, the Pope described the Catholic Church here as “only a little plant, but she is full of hope because of her trust in the power of divine grace,” and he invited Christians to dedicate themselves to proclaiming the Gospel. To the priests he explained, “The Church has no wish to impose her own faith on others. It is clear, however, that this does not exempt the Lord’s disciples from communicating to others the great gift which they have received: life in Christ.” In the afternoon he met the young people at Eurasia University. To each of them he said, “You are a thought of God, you are a heartbeat of God.”

In these same hours, newspapers all over the world were reporting a passage from the Pope’s talk the preceding evening, when he said, expressing his appreciation for the nuclear disarmament of Kazakhstan, “Controversies must be resolved not by recourse to arms but by the peaceful means of negotiation and dialogue.” Taken out of its context, the phrase was applied tout court to the crisis initiated by the attacks on America. That very same day, the press reported the letter from the bishops of the United States to President Bush, which set up precise limits to a military reaction but did not exclude the legitimacy of an armed response in self-defense. The Pope thus appeared to be in contrast with his bishops. Hence, on Monday, September 24th, the papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls chose Reuters news agency as the channel for explaining that John Paul II is not an absolute pacifist, and that a form of self-defense with the purpose of keeping the terrorists from striking again is legitimate, provided that it be selective and aimed only at the guilty parties, without hitting the civilian population and above all without it taking on the connotations of a clash between civilizations, a holy war against Islam. Navarro’s words made headlines all over the world, and were blown up and distorted to the point of being presented as a “green light” for the United States to attack. In the meantime, the Pope, meeting with representatives of the world of culture in Congress Hall, the last public event of his visit in Kazakhstan, cried out, “I wish to reaffirm the Catholic Church’s respect for Islam, for authentic Islam: the Islam that prays, that is concerned for those in need. Recalling the errors of the past, including the most recent past, all believers ought to unite their efforts to ensure that God is never made the hostage of human ambitions. Hatred, fanaticism and terrorism profane the name of God and disfigure the true image of man.” As he left the former Soviet republic, John Paul II quoted a brief passage from his letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, and invited Christians to promote “peace, so often threatened by the specter of catastrophic wars.”

Gregorio’s well
Whereas in Kazakhstan, the Pope had arrived to a freezing wind off the steppes, at Yerevan airport in Armenia the heat was stifling. The papal visit to this country was supposed to have taken place in 1999. But the death of Catholikos Karekin I had prevented it from happening. Now, John Paul II’s presence has a particular significance: Armenian Christians are celebrating the 1,700 years of Christianity of their people, the first to embrace the Christian faith as such, an event of the year 301, when King Tiridates III, healed by intercession of Gregory the Enlightener, decided to embrace the Gospel of Christ. The Bishop of Rome’s journey is a moving step forward on the road to ecumenism; for the first time in his 22-year pontificate, John Paul II was hosted for the duration of his visit in the residence of the head of an Eastern Church not yet in communion with Rome. There are no significant differences between Roman Catholics and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which belongs to the group of churches called pre-Chalcedonian, in that they did not participate in the Council of Chalcedon which defined the doctrine of the two natures of Christ against the Monophysite heresy. Various common declarations, signed by the Pope and by Patriarchs of Armenia, state that the faith is the same and that Jesus Christ is “true God and true man.” Catholikos Karekin II, another precedent, allowed John Paul II to celebrate on the great open-air altar which had just been inaugurated in front of the Cathedral of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin.

But the Pope’s presence in this nation, whose people has suffered untold persecutions throughout its history, is also an act of homage to the victims of genocide, the “Metz Yeghérn,” the “great evil.” The barbarous slaughter of a million and a half Armenian Christians occurred in 1915 at the hands of Ottoman Turks. John Paul II was moved by his visit to the Memorial of Tzitzernagaberd, “Hill of the Swallows,” where a perpetual flame burns in remembrance of the genocide. “We are appalled by the terrible violence done to the Armenian people,” said the Pope in his prayer, “and dismayed that the world still knows such inhumanity.” The Armenian genocide, documented in the impressive museum annexed to the Memorial and attested to by the witness of dozens of diplomats of the time, is still today shamefully denied by Turkey. Admitting what happened would force the authorities in Ankara to open up for debate also the figure of Kemal Araturk, the father of their country, who came to power at the end of World War II and did not halt the ethnic massacres of Armenian Christians.

Before leaving Armenia, the Pope wanted to visit the monastery of Khor Virap, which rises on top of a hill a short distance from Mount Ararat and the Turkish border. Here, inside an ancient church, is the well dug 130 feet deep into the rock where St Gregory the Enlightener was held prisoner for thirteen years. Out of that damp cistern, in 301 AD, emerged the announcement that converted the people who, despite massacres, deportations, and ethnic cleansings, continues to be a Christian enclave surrounded by Islamic countries.