Pope John Paul has urged the youth of Ukraine to use their talents to build prosperity at home, rather than leaving their native country in the hope of an easy life abroad. The Pope was addressing a 200,000 strong crowd at a youth rally in Lviv, the Catholic heartland of the former Soviet Republic. "Your country is going through a difficult and complex transition from the totalitarian regime which oppressed it for many years to a society at last free and democratic," he said on the penultimate day of his controversial pilgrimage.
He warned that post-Communist freedom posed new challenges, adding: "Freedom is demanding, and in a sense is more costly than slavery.
"Do not go from the slavery of the Communist regime to the slavery of consumerism," said the pontiff.
Earlier, the Pope celebrated mass at an open-air mass in front of the largest crowd of his five-day visit to Ukraine, with organisers estimating the turnout at up to 500,000. This contrasted with disappointing attendances at two open-air masses in Ukraine's capital Kiev, which is traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy.
Orthodox militants have protested against the Pope's visit, accusing Catholics of seizing around 2,500 parishes in western Ukraine between 1989 and 1991, the final years of the Soviet Union. Although the Ukraine is split along religious lines, Uniate (or Greek) Catholicism has grown steadily during the post-Soviet decade and now claims six million believers as opposed to ten million practising Orthodox faithful.
