.- Pope Francis will arrive in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sept. 22. During his first day in the city, the pope will take a walk in the streets of the Old City, and he will head toward the Gate of Dawn, one of the ancient points of access to the Lithuanian capital. There, he will pray the Rosary and deliver a speech before an icon of Mary Mother of Mercy.



The speech and the rosary were not initially part of the pope’s schedule in Vilnius. They were a last minute addition to program, and a very meaningful one.



Inessa Caukaskien, a member of the Vilnius pilgrimage center, told CNA that “the Gate of Dawn is one of the most ancient and important place of pilgrimage in Lithuania.”



The Icon of Mary Mother of Mercy is a significant object of devotion. One of the few icons of the Blessed Virgin Mary without the infant Jesus in her arms, it was painted between 1620 and 1630, and dressed and crowned of silver in the 18th century.



The painter is unknown, but the pilgrimage center records more than 8,000 graces obtained thanks to the prayers offered in front of the icon.



It was first known as the painting of the Madonna of the Gate of Dawn Chapel. It was Pope Pius XI who decreed that the name of the icon would become the Icon of the Holy Mother of Mercy.



St. Faustina Kowalska lived briefly in 1929 at the convent of the Congregation of Our Lady of Mercy in Vilnius, attracted by this veneration. It was in Vilnius that St. Faustina envisioned for the first time her devotion to Divine Mercy.



Archbishop Gintaras Grusas of Vilnius told CNA that “Sr. Faustina and the image of Divine Mercy are tangibly put together with the Holy Mother of Mercy icon by the fact that the shrine was the first place where the original image of Divine Mercy was exposed for a public veneration.”



He added that “the strong tie with the image of Divine Mercy and the Mother of Mercy Chapel continues to this day, marking Vilnius very much as a City of Mercy.”



“When Saint John Paul II canonized St. Faustina, Grusas continued, “he mentioned the cities where she has been, and among them was Vilnius. He gave a mandate of being apostles of mercy and to continue to spread that message, which is what we are continuing to try to do. This is the city where through St. Faustina, with the help of Bl. Sopocko, we spread around the world the message of mercy, we continue to proclaim that message today.”



St. John Paul II was linked to the Holy Mother of Mercy, too. There is a reproduction of the Icon in the Lithuanian chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica.



“That image,” Grusas told CNA, “is very much beloved by St. John Paul II. As a matter of fact, when he was elected pope, he went to the Lithuanian Chapel to pray in front of the reproduction of the icon. There, he prayed for his papacy. When he came to Vilnius, he also brought his cardinal’s zucchetto here, to fulfill a promise he had made to the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, we have in the sacrity both Cardinal Wojtyla’s zucchetto and also his papal zucchetto, which he left as well.”



John Paul II kicked off his Sep. 4, 1993 visit to Lithuania with the rosary in the Chapel of the Gate of Dawn. Pope Francis, then, will do the same.



The pope is also scheduled to go to the Shrine of Divine Mercy, where the original image of Merciful Jesus painted under St. Faustina indications is exposed and where perpetual Eucharistic adoration take place.



In this way, Pope Francis will honor his visit to the “city of mercy.”</s>VILNIUS: Pope Francis arrived in Lithuania on Saturday (Sep 22) to begin a four-day visit to the Baltic states, carrying a message of solidarity as they look warily towards a newly aggressive Russia nearly 30 years after they broke away from the then-Soviet Union.

The pontiff will spend two days in predominantly Catholic Lithuania before moving on to Latvia and then Estonia.

He was greeted at Vilnius airport by Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, a military brass band and a group of children waving Vatican flags and singing songs.

He then left for the presidential palace in central Vilnius to make his first address.

The trip is the first by a pope to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia since 1993. A quarter of a century later, the countries are members of NATO and the euro zone but the past still looms large in a region subject in turn to Soviet and Nazi oppression and where religious persecution left a traumatic legacy.

In Lithuania, Francis will visit the Vilnius Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, a former Soviet KGB prison where hundreds were murdered and thousands shipped off to Siberia, including many priests.

He will also pray at a monument to the victims of the Vilnius ghetto, in a country where only several hundred of over 200,000 Jews survived the Holocaust.</s>VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - The Latest on Pope Francis' visit to the Baltic countries (all times local):

Pope Francis is urging Lithuania, which endured decades of Soviet and Nazi occupation, expulsions and executions, to be a model of solidarity in a world riven by intolerance as he began a visit to three Baltic nations.

Francis arrived in Lithuania on Saturday to encourage the faith and mark the 100th anniversary of Baltic independence, kicking off a grueling, four-day trip that will also take him to Latvia and Estonia.

Speaking outside the presidential palace in the capital Vilnius, Francis recalled that until the arrival of "totalitarian ideologies" in the 20th century, Lithuania had been a peaceful home to a variety of ethnic and religious groups.

He said the world today is marked by political forces that exploit fear and conflict to justify violence and expulsions of others - a reference to anti-immigrant populist and far-right groups in Europe and beyond.

Pope Francis has departed on a pilgrimage to all three Baltic countries.

Francis left Rome early Saturday morning on a special Alitalia flight headed to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

His four-day trip will also include Latvia and Estonia.

Francis greeted the Airbus A320's captain and two of its flight attendants at the top of the stairs to the aircraft before taking his seat inside.

Russia will be the elephant in the room as Pope Francis begins a four-day visit to the Baltics amid renewed alarm about Moscow's intentions in the region it has twice occupied.

Francis is travelling to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to mark the 100th anniversaries of their independence and to encourage the faith in the nations, which saw five decades of Soviet-imposed religious repression and state-sponsored atheism.

"Fifty years of occupation left their mark both on the church and on the people," said Monsignor Gintaras Grusas, archbishop of Vilnius. "People have deep wounds from that period that take time to heal."

Francis lands Saturday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to begin four-day, three-country trip that will feature encounters with political leaders as well as the Catholic, Lutheran and Russian Orthodox faithful.</s>Pope Francis arrived Saturday in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on a three-day trip through the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

An Alitalia plane carrying the pontiff landed in the Lithuanian capital at 11.20 am local time, where President Dalia Grybauskaite, along with government officials and those from the local church awaited him.</s>Pope Francis on Sunday paid homage to Holocaust victims who perished in the Vilnius ghetto, 75 years to the day after the Nazis liquidated it, and warned 100,000 Lithuanians gathered for mass against "pernicious attitudes" leading to genocide.

"Seventy-five years ago, this nation witnessed the final destruction of the Vilnius Ghetto; this was the climax of the killing of thousands of Jews that had started two years earlier," the pontiff told faithful in a homily in Kaunas, Lithuania's second city.

Pre-war Lithuania was home to a thriving Jewish community of more than 200,000 people, with its capital Vilnius a hub of learning known as the "Jerusalem of the North".

According to historians, around 195,000 -- nearly the entire Jewish population -- perished at the hands of the Nazis and local collaborators under the 1941-44 German occupation.

Today around 3,000 Jews live in the EU and NATO member state which has a population of 2.9 million, the majority of whom are Catholic.

Recalling the Holocaust, Francis prayed for divine "discernment" to alert the faithful to any reappearance of "that pernicious attitude, any whiff of it that can taint the heart of generations that did not experience those times and can sometimes be taken in by such siren songs."

The pope also said he would pay tribute to Holocaust victims at the Vilnius ghetto memorial later on Sunday at ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of its liquidation.

"In these days, I reserve a special thought for the Jewish community," the pontiff said, calling for "dialogue and the shared commitment for justice and peace".

Francis will travel to mainly Protestant Latvia on Monday and secular Estonia on Tuesday as all three Baltic states mark 100 years of independence this year.

The last century of Baltic history was marked by both the Nazi invasion and then decades of persecution under Soviet occupation during the Cold War.

Vilnius estimates that more than 50,000 Lithuanians died under Soviet occupation in camps, prisons, and during deportations between 1944 and 1953. Another 20,000 partisans and supporters were killed in anti-Soviet guerilla warfare.

"Kaunas knows about this; Lithuania as a whole can testify to it, still shuddering at the mention of Siberia, or the ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas, among others," Francis told the faithful.

The Argentine pontiff will also honour victims of Soviet-era persecution later on Sunday during a visit to a museum in the former KGB building in Vilnius where regime opponents were tortured and killed.

Behind the Iron Curtain, the Catholic Church played a key role in the non-violent anti-Soviet resistance, especially in Lithuania, the only Catholic-majority country of the three.

As a result, it was persecuted with both priests and bishops jailed, sent to Siberia or killed by totalitarian authorities.</s>The Latest: Pope quips "I am the devil" next to John Paul

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — The Latest on Pope Francis' visit to the Baltic countries (all times local):

Pope Francis has acknowledged that his reputation pales a bit compared to St. John Paul II — at least as far as Poles are concerned.

Greeting journalists Saturday en route to Lithuania, Francis was given a book about the former pope by Polish photographer Grzegorz Galazka. Receiving the large book with a beaming John Paul on the cover, Francis quipped: "(Pope John Paul II) was a saint, I am the devil."

Laughing, Galazka immediately corrected him: "No, you are both saints! You are both saints!"

Francis' quip appeared to acknowledge that he has his detractors, particularly among conservative Catholics who long for the more doctrinaire papacies of John Paul and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.

The criticism of Francis by conservatives has grown more vocal recently amid the church's sex abuse scandals and the distress over his opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Lithuania's president has expressed gratitude to Pope Francis for paying tribute to Holocaust victims in the Baltic nation.

Francis landed Saturday in the capital Vilnius for a four-day visit to the Baltics. He will visit a memorial site of the Vilnius Ghetto on Sunday, the 75th anniversary of its final destruction.

President Dalia Grybauskaite said Saturday: "In a country brutalized by both Nazi and Stalinist crimes, many people stood up to rescue Jews because they saw humanity as the ultimate good."

On Sept. 23, 1943, the remaining residents in the Vilnius Ghetto were executed or sent off to concentration camps by the occupyuing forces of Nazi Germany.

Francis' visit will also include neighboring Latvia and Estonia.

Pope Francis is urging Lithuania, which endured decades of Soviet and Nazi occupation, expulsions and executions, to be a model of solidarity in a world riven by intolerance as he began a visit to three Baltic nations.

Francis arrived in Lithuania on Saturday to encourage the faith and mark the 100th anniversary of Baltic independence, kicking off a grueling, four-day trip that will also take him to Latvia and Estonia.

Speaking outside the presidential palace in the capital Vilnius, Francis recalled that until the arrival of "totalitarian ideologies" in the 20th century, Lithuania had been a peaceful home to a variety of ethnic and religious groups.

He said the world today is marked by political forces that exploit fear and conflict to justify violence and expulsions of others — a reference to anti-immigrant populist and far-right groups in Europe and beyond.

Pope Francis has departed on a pilgrimage to all three Baltic countries.

Francis left Rome early Saturday morning on a special Alitalia flight headed to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

His four-day trip will also include Latvia and Estonia.

Francis greeted the Airbus A320's captain and two of its flight attendants at the top of the stairs to the aircraft before taking his seat inside.

Russia will be the elephant in the room as Pope Francis begins a four-day visit to the Baltics amid renewed alarm about Moscow's intentions in the region it has twice occupied.

Francis is travelling to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to mark the 100th anniversaries of their independence and to encourage the faith in the nations, which saw five decades of Soviet-imposed religious repression and state-sponsored atheism.

"Fifty years of occupation left their mark both on the church and on the people," said Monsignor Gintaras Grusas, archbishop of Vilnius. "People have deep wounds from that period that take time to heal."

Francis lands Saturday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to begin four-day, three-country trip that will feature encounters with political leaders as well as the Catholic, Lutheran and Russian Orthodox faithful.</s>Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

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VILNIUS: Pope Francis kicked off a Baltic tour in Catholic Lithuania where he will honour victims of the region’s Nazi and Soviet occupations as the Church reels from fresh clerical abuse scandals.

The four-day trip to the northeastern edge of the European Union and Nato alliance brings him geographically close to Russia, where Vatican diplomats have been trying for years to arrange a papal visit. The pontiff will visit mainly Protestant Latvia on Monday and secular Estonia on Tuesday as all three Baltic states mark 100 years of independence this year.

But the celebrations risk being overshadowed by a fresh wave of devastating claims of sexual abuse by clergy across the globe.

Scandals in Australia, Europe, and North and South America have involved widespread claims of abuse – and cover-ups – by clergymen and lay members with one archbishop describing it as the church’s ‘own 9/11’.

Francis accepted the resignations of two more bishops from Chile, which is investigating more than 100 cases of sexual abuse by the clergy. He has called for a meeting of the heads of Catholic bishops’ conferences at the Vatican next February to discuss the issue of the ‘protection of minors’.

However, the pontiff has kept a stony silence regarding claims he had ignored allegations of abuse that were reported to him.

U2 frontman Bono said he could see the pain on Francis’s face after a Wednesday meeting when he told the pope that “it looks to some people that the abusers are being more protected than the victims”.

Church authorities in Germany are expected to officially publish a study detailing decades of child sex abuse by priests as Francis winds down his trip on Tuesday.

According to the study, 1,670 clergymen in Germany committed some form of sexual attack against 3,677 minors between 1946 and 2014, Spiegel Online reported earlier this month quoting leaked data.

Francis will meet President Dalia Grybauskaite in Vilnius before addressing youth and visiting a revered icon.

His trip will follow in the footsteps of late Polish-born pontiff Saint John Paul II, who travelled to all three Baltic states in 1993, just two years after they broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union. The trio have since firmly anchored their future in alliances with the West by joining both Nato and the EU in 2004.

While that led to solid economic growth, it also brought social inequality that triggered mass emigration to western Europe – a troubling trend for states with populations ranging from just 1.3 to 2.9 million.

“I recall we were discouraged by our school principal from going to church” in Soviet times, Vaida Nazarovaite, 44, told AFP as she awaited the pontiff’s arrival in central Vilnius.

The last century of Baltic history was marked by the Nazi invasion – which wiped out almost all of the region’s Jews – and then decades of Soviet occupation during the Cold War.

Behind the Iron Curtain, the Catholic Church played a key role in the non-violent anti-Soviet resistance, especially in Lithuania, the only Catholic-majority country of the three.

“The Church was a fortress for all dissidents, not only Catholics. It strongly resisted Sovietisation and defended the rights of believers,” historian Terese Birute Burauskaite told AFP.

As a result, it was persecuted with both priests and bishops killed by the authorities. Vilnius estimates that more than 50,000 Lithuanians died in camps, prisons, and during deportations between 1944 and 1953. Another 20,000 partisans and supporters were killed in anti-Soviet guerilla warfare.

“I will honour all those whose past sacrifices have made freedom possible in the present,” the pontiff said in a video message addressed to the people of the Baltic states.

Francis will visit a museum in the former KGB building in Vilnius where regime opponents were tortured and killed. He will also honour Holocaust victims at the ghetto memorial in Vilnius, known as the ‘Jerusalem of the North’ for its vibrant Jewish community prior to WWII.

Around 200,000 Lithuanian Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and local collaborators under the 1941-44 German occupation. Today there are only around 3,000 Jews left in the country of 2.9 million people. — AFP</s>KAUNAS, Lithuania — The Latest on Pope Francis' trip to the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (all times local):

Pope Francis has warned Lithuanians not to forget the suffering of past generations and stay alert to future threats as he visited a museum dedicated to the atrocities committed during a half-century of Soviet and Nazi occupation.

Francis denounced the "unrestrained ambition" of Lithuania's past rulers and prayed for future ones to resist "the spiritual sickness that remains a constant temptation for us as a people."

Francis spoke after visiting the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, located in a former KGB headquarters where Lithuanians were detained, tortured and executed.

He also marked the 75th anniversary Sunday of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto, when the final Jewish residents were executed or sent off to concentration camps.

Pope Francis is warning against a rebirth of the "pernicious" anti-Semitic sentiments that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance for Lithuania's centuries-old Jewish community that was nearly extinguished during World War II.

Francis spoke at a Mass on Sunday that marked the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the Ghetto in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital which had been known for centuries as the "Jerusalem of the North" for its importance to Jewish thought and politics.

He warned against the temptation to desire primacy and domination over others. He prayed for the gift of discernment "to detect in time any new seeds of that pernicious attitude, any whiff of it that can taint the heart of generations."

Historical revisionism is a hot topic in Lithuania, where ordinary Lithuanians executed Jews alongside the Nazi occupiers, wiping out the Jewish population of the capital of Vilnius during the war.

Pope Francis has paid tribute to Lithuanians who suffered and died during Soviet and Nazi occupations on the day the country remembers the near-extermination of its centuries-old Jewish community during the Holocaust.

Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania's second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation.

During Mass in Santakos Park, Francis honored both Jewish victims of Nazi-era executions and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.

He denounced those who debate who was more virtuous in the past and fail to address the tasks of the present — an apparent reference to historic revisionism. The issue is acute in Lithuania, where ordinary Lithuanians executed Jews alongside the Nazi occupiers, wiping out the Jewish population of the capital of Vilnius.</s>Pope Francis has warned against the rebirth of anti-Semitic attitudes that fuelled the Holocaust.

Francis made the comments as he marked the annual remembrance for Lithuania's centuries-old Jewish community that was nearly wiped out during the Second World War.

He spoke after visiting the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, located in a former KGB headquarters where Lithuanians were detained, tortured and executed.

He warned Lithuanians not to forget the suffering of past generations and stay alert to future threats as he visited the museum dedicated to the atrocities committed during a half-century of Soviet and Nazi occupation.

Francis denounced the 'unrestrained ambition' of Lithuania's past rulers and prayed for future ones to resist 'the spiritual sickness that remains a constant temptation for us as a people.'

He also marked the 75th anniversary Sunday of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto, when the final Jewish residents were executed or sent off to concentration camps.

The pope began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania's second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation.

During Mass in Santakos Park, Francis honoured both Jewish victims of the Nazis and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured, killed and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.

'Earlier generations still bear the scars of the period of the occupation, anguish at those who were deported, uncertainty about those who never returned, shame for those who were informers and traitors,' Francis told the crowd, which was estimated by the local church to number 100,000.

'Kaunas knows about this. Lithuania as a whole can testify to it, still shuddering at the mention of Siberia, or the ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas, among others.'

He denounced those who get caught up in debating who was more virtuous in the past and fail to address the tasks of the present - an apparent reference to historic revisionism that is afflicting parts of Eastern Europe as it comes to terms with wartime-era crimes.

Francis recalled that Sunday marked the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the Ghetto in the capital Vilnius, which had been known for centuries as the 'Jerusalem of the North' for its importance to Jewish thought and politics.

Each year, the September 23 anniversary is commemorated with readings of the names of Jews who were killed by Nazis or Lithuanian partisans or were deported to concentration camps.

The pope warned against the temptation 'that can dwell in every human heart' to want to be superior or dominant to others.

And he prayed for the gift of discernment 'to detect in time any new seeds of that pernicious attitude, any whiff of it that can taint the heart of generations that did not experience those times and can sometimes be taken in by such siren songs'.

He warned against the temptation to desire primacy and domination over others.

He prayed for the gift of discernment 'to detect in time any new seeds of that pernicious attitude, any whiff of it that can taint the heart of generations.'

Historical revisionism is a hot topic in Lithuania, where ordinary Lithuanians executed Jews alongside the Nazi occupiers, wiping out the Jewish population of the capital of Vilnius during the war.

Across Europe, far-right, xenophobic and neo-fascist political movements are making gains, including in Lithuania.

Francis noted that he would pray later in the day at a plaque in the Ghetto itself and called for 'dialogue and the shared commitment for justice and peace'.</s>Pope Francis on Sunday paid homage to Holocaust victims who perished in the Vilnius ghetto, 75 years to the day after the Nazis liquidated it, and warned 100,000 Lithuanians gathered for mass against “pernicious attitudes” leading to genocide.

“Seventy-five years ago, this nation witnessed the final destruction of the Vilnius Ghetto; this was the climax of the killing of thousands of Jews that had started two years earlier,” the pontiff told faithful in a homily in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second city.

Pre-war Lithuania was home to a thriving Jewish community of more than 200,000 people, with its capital Vilnius a hub of learning known as the “Jerusalem of the North”.

According to historians, around 195,000 — nearly the entire Jewish population — perished at the hands of the Nazis and local collaborators under the 1941-44 German occupation. —AFP
Pope Francis arrives in Vilnius, Lithuania, on his visit to the Baltic States.