Wednesday, January 27, 1999
Pope gets rock-star greeting
Resist 'culture of death,' he says
BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
ST. LOUIS — Pope John Paul II, on his first visit to the Midwest since 1987, received a welcome worthy of a rock star Tuesday, with shrieking teen-agers, flashing camera bulbs and commemorative bandanas waving in his honor.
The pope urged his “favorite” supporters — 20,000 young people from St. Louis, the Tristate and throughout the country — to dedicate themselves to lives of Christian training and discipleship.
He also implored crowds to resist “the culture of death” and embrace life for the unborn, the terminally ill and the handicapped.
“I am told that there was much excitement in St. Louis during the recent baseball season, when two great players (Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa) were competing to break the home-run record,” the pope said at an evening prayer service in the Kiel Center, home to the NHL's St. Louis Blues.
“You can feel the same great enthusiasm as you train for a different goal: the goal of following Christ, the goal of bringing his message to the world.”
Mr. McGwire, who was raised Catholic, met briefly with John Paul II at Kiel Center. The two shook hands just before the rally began.
The pontiff, 78, on his seventh trip to the United States and his third to the Midwest, arrived from Mexico City at 2 p.m. EST at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and spoke shortly after to President and Mrs. Clinton, local dignitaries and a vast television audience.
Sitting next to a president who supports legal access to abortion, John Paul II compared abortion and assisted suicide to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, tried in St. Louis' Old Courthouse.
In deciding that case, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled, in effect, that slaves were property and not citizens — a decision, the pope said, that declared “an entire class of human beings — people of African descent — outside the boundaries of the national community and the Constitution's protection.”
“Today,” the pope said, “the conflict is between a culture that affirms, cherishes and celebrates the gift of life, and a culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings — the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped and others considered "unuseful' — to be outside the boundaries of legal protection.
The frail, stooped pope then headed to a private meeting with President Clinton, who towered over him as the two left the lectern.
“We welcome you back to America,” the president told the pontiff. “For 20 years you have challenged us to think of life not in terms of what we acquire for ourselves but what we give of ourselves. ... ..We honor you for standing for human dignity and human rights.”
The president quoted a Polish phrase that means, “May you live a hundred years and more.”
Afterward, the pope rode in the popemobile along streets lined with thousands of spectators to the home of the Most Rev. Justin Rigali, archbishop of St. Louis.
The pope's first day in St. Louis was devoted to Catholic youth, one of his favorite audiences as he travels the world. Teens from a variety of cities, including Sioux Falls, S.D., and Dallas, rode buses to St. Louis to glimpse the pope and celebrate with other Catholic youth.
A group from Holy Name Catholic Church in Trenton, Ohio, arrived Monday night after a six-hour bus ride and slept on the floor of a Catholic high school 35 miles outside of St. Louis. They were up before dawn to join thousands of others in the “Walk in the Light” youth march.
“I think this is one of the biggest things in my life — I think it is the biggest,” said Peter Weber, 17, an Edgewood High School senior who lives in Hamilton.
Mr. Weber took two days' excused absences from school to come to St. Louis.
“I think the pope is great, because he's not preaching about being Catholic. He's preaching about leading a good life and being a good Christian,” the Hamilton teen said. “He's a person for all people.”
Mr. Weber and 32 other teens from Holy Name's youth group, accompanied by seven adults, gathered in the morning chill beneath the Gateway Arch on Tuesday. After a mile walk that took nearly two hours, the teens spread out along Papal Plaza, an outdoor area of several blocks that became more hospitable as temperatures warmed.
A stage set up on the steps of Soldier's Memorial hosted Christian jugglers, chastity gurus (lay people who lecture on the benefits of chastity) and a rapping priest with a broad New York accent.
The Rev. Stan Fortuna, a Franciscan friar from the Bronx, urged the crowds to go to confession frequently as the teens screamed their approval.
Inside Kiel Center, people sang and swayed to songs such as “Cry the Gospel,” and went to confession in cardboard confessionals erected for the rally. A section of magenta-capped American bishops basked in the teens' chants of “We love you!”
“It's awesome. I love it,” said Hamilton resident Shelly Williams, 18. “Honestly, I didn't think there were this many people who were Catholics.”
Earlier, teens in the Kiel Center erupted in a deafening and sustained roar as they watched a live videotape of the pope's Mexicana Airlines flight touch down. Every glimpse of him afterward prompted screams worthy of a rock band.
“Who would've ever thought I'd have the chance to see the pope?” said Miss Williams, who works in retail. “There aren't words to describe all he's done and how he affects every person, no matter what religion.”
In one of two homilies delivered at the Kiel Center, the pope enumerated the challenges that his audience's generation faces.
“Sometimes the world itself seems filled with darkness,” he said. “There is something terribly wrong when so many young people are overcome by hopelessness to the point of taking their own lives.”
“But you live in the light! Do not listen to those who encour age you to lie, to shirk responsibility, to put yourselves first. Do not listen to those who tell you chastity is passe.”
At the Kiel Center, John Paul II kissed a young man who presented him with a St. Louis Blues hockey uniform. The pope also received a hockey stick.
“So I am prepared to return once more to play hockey,” the pope said.
The pope offered greetings to non-Catholics in his airport remarks, and to other Christians, Jews and Muslims, in particular. He praised American generosity but urged Americans not to neglect the needs of the less fortunate.
And, echoing his earlier criticism of the U.S.-led bombing of Iraq, he said a rejection of all violence goes hand in hand with his vision of embracing life.
As many as 600,000 people are expected to turn out to see the pope in St. Louis. More than 530,000 Catholics live in and around St. Louis, which was founded by French Catholics in 1764.
Today, he is scheduled to celebrate a Mass before 104,000 people at the Trans World Dome.
Vice President Al Gore will attend the prayer service.
The Associated Press contributed to ths report.
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![[pope]](/editions/1999/01/27/pope_150x127.jpg)
