ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 24, 1996 TAG: 9606240151
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PADERBORN, GERMANY
SOURCE: Associated Press
Pope John Paul II praised four Germans who had opposed Hitler - including a Jewish convert who died at Auschwitz - during an outdoor Mass on Saturday that set the stage for beatification ceremonies today.
The three priests and one nun were a ``sign of the resistance to the demonical forces in a world remote from God,'' he told about 70,000 people gathered under colorful umbrellas at an airstrip on the damp summer morning.
John Paul refrained from expanding his praise, however, to the Catholic church as a whole during the Nazi era, as his written comments indicated he had planned.
The pope will beatify two of the priests in a ceremony today in Berlin that marks a step toward sainthood. The other priest and the nun already have been beatified.
The 76-year-old pope, slowed since hip-replacement surgery two years ago, used an elevator to reach the altar instead of walking up the 25 steps.
Not since Pope Leo III met with Charlemagne to seal the union between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire in 799 has a pope visited this old religious city north of Frankfurt. It was part of a three-day trip to deal with dissent among Catholics in a country where only 20 percent of them regularly attend church.
``Remember the long history of Christian faith in this country,'' he said Saturday. ``Don't let this faith grow weaker and more feeble.''
John Paul, who has won praise from Jews for speaking out against anti-Semitism, spoke about the two men he will beatify and their role in German Christian history during the Holocaust.
The Rev. Bernhard Lichtenberg died in jail for his sermons against persecuting Jews; the Rev. Karl Leisner was sent to concentration camps for expressing regret that an assassination attempt on Hitler had failed.
The pope also cited two Germans who were beatified in 1987: Edith Stein, who converted from Judaism to become a nun and died in the Auschwitz gas chamber; and the Rev. Rupert Mayer, a Jesuit priest who survived Nazi persecution.
He omitted remarks that had been distributed to the press beforehand, which read in part: ``The four beatified persons symbolize the many Catholic women and men who, at the cost of many and diverse sacrifices, rejected National Socialist tyranny and resisted the brown ideology.
``They are thus part of the resistance offered by the whole Church to a system contemptuous of God and human beings.''
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the full text is an official papal pronouncement. He said he had no idea why John Paul skipped the passage at Mass.
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