Pope John Paul, addressing his largest crowd ever in Poland, said yesterday only God would decide if he could return home again and warned that the new millennium was threatened by an onslaught of evil.
Preaching to an estimated 2.7 million people packed in and around Krakow's Blonia meadow the Pope, 82, showed that age and a string of health problems had not dimmed his spirit. Despite the heat and his heavy liturgical vestments, he completed a three-hour ceremony and responded to chants from his adoring countryfolk with the wit and the timing of an actor.
"I want to thank [Krakow] for the hospitality and I would also like to add `see you again' but I leave this completely in God's hands," he said, improvising at the end of the mass.
The Pope's message in his sermon was a somber warning about a future where a lack of respect for life was leading the world to destruction.
"Man lives in fear of the future, of emptiness, of suffering and annihilation," said the Pope, who during his four-day trip has offered a message of divine comfort to a world still shaken by the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.
A prayer read during the mass asked God to heal "the sorrow of nations in the darkness of wars and the suffering of people who are threatened with hunger and terrorism."
The leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics has used his ninth trip home to console the poor and jobless in Poland, which is suffering a harsh economic crisis.
He has received a rapturous welcome from his countryfolk, who revere him as a father figure who inspired their resistance to communism and steadied them in the difficult years of the transition to democracy after they won freedom in 1989.
"We have been waiting here since Friday. He is the only Pole we can believe and trust," said Isabella Wrobel, 21, from Warsaw, sitting amid the sea of people. "I would do anything for him, sleeping on this field for two nights is nothing."
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