c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Acknowledging that age has brought him physical suffering, an ailing Pope John Paul II began a pilgrimage to the French shrine of Lourdes on Saturday (Aug. 14) to reaffirm his deep personal faith in the Virgin Mary and to pray for peace in the world.

Like many of the 6 million pilgrims who travel each year to the mountain shrine in the Pyrenees of southwest France to seek healing, the pope started his visit by drinking water from a spring in the cave of Massabielle where a 14-year-old peasant girl claimed to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary almost a century and a half ago.

As bells rang in the towering, Gothic-style basilica that stands above the cave, John Paul sat on a white throne on wheels, his head bent in prayer. Candles flickered on the walls of the cave.

Addressing the sick, their families and the people who care for them, the 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff said he was one with them. “I am here with you, dear brothers and sisters, as a pilgrim to Our Lady,” he said. “I make my own your prayers and your hopes.

“With you, I share a time of life marked by physical suffering, yet not for that reason any less fruitful in God’s wondrous plan. With you I pray for all those who trust in your prayers.”

The pope suffers from the neurological disorder Parkinson’s disease and painful arthritis. Because of his ailments he is confined to a wheelchair and often has trouble articulating words.

In the early evening John Paul returned to the cave to introduce the recitation of the “Mysteries of Light,” a new section of the rosary that he composed in 2002 at the start of the 25th year of his pontificate. He led a procession of pilgrims, stopping five times for the reading of the five meditations and prayer that make up the devotion.

Following the rosary the pope returned to his residence to watch a traditional torchlight procession from a riverside terrace after a private dinner.

John Paul called on the pilgrims in the procession to join him “in imploring the Virgin Mary to obtain for our world the longed-for gift of peace.”

“May forgiveness and brotherly love take root in human hearts. May every weapon be laid down, and all hatred and violence put aside. May everyone see in his neighbor not an enemy to be fought, but a brother to be accepted and loved, so that we may join in building a better world,” the pope said.

“Together let us invoke the Queen of Peace and renew our commitment to the service of reconciliation, dialogue and solidarity,” he said. “In this way we shall merit the happiness which the Lord has promised to the peacemakers.”

Making his 104th trip outside Italy in his almost 26 years as leader of the world’s Catholics, the pontiff flew from Rome to the Taubes Airport where French President Jacques Chirac welcomed him warmly. The two-day visit was John Paul’s seventh to France and his second to Lourdes.

On Sunday, the pope will preside over a Mass marking the 150th anniversary of the proclamation by Pope Pius IX in 1854 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born without original sin.

The French president, who had helped to defeat the pope’s campaign for a reference to Europe’s Christian roots in the preamble to the new European Union constitution, stressed France’s support for John Paul’s stand on moral and ethical issues.

France, he said, joined with the Vatican in its “battle” for peace and liberty, solidarity and justice, its efforts to protect the environment and its rejection of “any form of discrimination and racism” and “the scandal of mass poverty.”

Chirac praised John Paul as an “untiring pilgrim for all these battles, a universal pastor and man of peace.”

The pope, seated on his mobile throne in front of a wall-size mural of the Pyrenees in an airport VIP salon, spoke slowly in a hoarse voice and with obvious effort.

“With great emotion I wish to join the millions of pilgrims who come to Lourdes each year from every part of the world in order to entrust to the Mother of the Lord the intentions which they bear in their hearts and to ask for her help and intercession,” John Paul said.

Offering his “homage to the great patrimony of culture and faith” in French history, the pope said the church wanted to work with secular leaders for the good of the world.

“With respect for the responsibilities and competences of all, the Catholic Church desires to offer society a specific contribution towards the building of a world in which the great ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity can form the basis of social life, in the tireless pursuit and promotion of the common good,” he said.

From the airport John Paul was driven the 10 miles to Lourdes in his glass-sided “popemobile.” As the vehicle passed at a walking pace through the narrow streets of Taubes and Lourdes, large crowds applauded and waved yellow and white Vatican flags.

At Lourdes, the pope was spending the night in the Accueil Notre-Dame, a residence for sick and disabled pilgrims, equipped with hospital beds and emergency oxygen supplies. Built in 1997, it has 290 rooms with 904 beds.

The residence is just across the fast-flowing waters of the River Gave from the Massabielle cave young Bernadette Soubirous, now St, Bernadette, said the Virgin Mary appeared to her 18 times between Feb. 11 and July 16, 1858, four years after the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception.

The girl, who was illiterate and claimed she knew nothing of the dogma, said that on her penultimate appearance, the “beautiful lady” told her, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

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The pope recalled St. Bernadette’s visions as he introduced the rosary.

“Kneeling here, before the grotto of Massabielle, I feel deeply that I have reached the goal of my pilgrimage,” the pope said. “Here the Blessed Virgin asked Bernadette to recite the rosary, as she herself told the beads. This grotto has thus become a unique school of prayer where Mary teaches everyone to gaze with burning love upon the face of Christ.”

The pope asked pilgrims to pray especially for vocations for priests and nuns.

John Paul has called the rosary his “favorite prayer,” saying it gives him comfort in “moments of joy and in moments of difficulty.” A devotion that Catholics have practiced for at least seven centuries, it consists of cycles of meditations on series of “sacred mysteries” and the recitation of Hail Marys, the Our Father and the Gloria Patri.

Riding in his slow-moving “popemobile,” John Paul led a procession of the sick, volunteers pushing stretchers and wheelchairs, doctors, paramedics, priests, nuns and bishops.

The procession wound through the sanctuary, stopping five times amid large crowds of pilgrims to hear meditations on each of the five mysteries of Jesus’ public ministry read in six languages and to recite the Hail Mary. A choir sang prayers.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered on the lawns outside the church waved white handkerchiefs and cheered.

DEA/JL END POLK