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VIENNA-Pope Benedict XVI confronted Friday the shadows of Europe’s past, praying at a Holocaust memorial here, as he spoke with worry about its future. Europe, he said, may extinguish itself, in numbers and spirit, if it embraces abortion and rejects Christianity, which he said “profoundly shaped the continent.” “It should be everyone’s concern to ensure that the day will never come when only its stones speak of Christianity,” the pope said, at the start of a three-day visit here.“An Austria without a vibrant Christian faith would no longer be Austria.”But the 80-year-old pope’s vigorous defense of Catholicism-delivered in a slightly hoarse voice because of what the Vatican said was a sore throat-may not be, at the moment, a popular stand in Austria.Benedict arrived here, in the chill and rain on his seventh trip outside of Italy, at a time of deep and lingering anger at the once-powerful Austrian church, with tens of thousands leaving the faith after two high-profile sex scandals. More broadly, the faith has steadily declined in a Europe often at odds with church positions on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.Still, he struck real and sensitive themes in Austria and around Europe. He spoke of low birthrates and an aging population, amid rising fear about immigrants, many of them Muslim, representing a larger percentage of the population. That fear is fueling anti-immigrant politics here, where centuries-old battles in Vienna against the Ottoman Turks remain central to history, and in other parts of Europe.Benedict stressed demographics as he repeated, in a strong multifront attack, the Vatican’s long-held opposition to abortion.“I appeal, then, to political leaders not to allow children to be considered as a form of illness,” he said in his native German to a gathering of diplomats. “I say this out of concern for humanity. But that is only one side of this disturbing problem.“The other is the need to do everything possible to make European countries once again open to welcoming children,” he added, in this nation with a low birthrate. “Encourage young married couples to establish new families and to become mothers and fathers! You will not only assist them, but you will benefit society as a whole.”Even as he spoke about the Christian roots of Europe, he acknowledged the role-and suffering-of Jews on the Continent.He told reporters in Italian on his plane before leaving Rome that his trip was aimed partly at showing “our sadness, our repentance and also our friendship with our Jewish brothers.”He said a short and silent prayer at the spare Holocaust memorial at Judenplatz here, constructed in part from the excavated ruins of a medieval synagogue destroyed in a pogrom in the 1420s. The memorial is to the 65,000 Austrian Jews killed during World War II.Benedict met with the chief rabbi of Vienna, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, and other leaders of the city’s 7,000 remaining Jews. In 1938, the city was one of the thriving Jewish centers of Europe. Some 185,000 Jews lived in the city then.Despite the broad themes he touched on, the pope’s trip was brief-only two nights-and centered on a visit on Saturday to celebrate the 850th anniversary of the shrine to the Virgin Mary at Mariazell, 60 miles from Vienna.Clearly, though, there were other facets to the trip, among them the sentimental. Before he was elected as the current pope in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German from nearby Bavaria, often came here for work and vacation.“You know how close I feel to your native land and to many of the people and places in your country,” he said at a welcoming ceremony at the airport that was forced into a hangar by rain.It was hard to gauge Friday how much Austria might return that affection. Several groups, Catholic and not, protested the trip, and the Austrian news media questioned how excited the nation was about it.But the rain was heavy, and while the crowd at the central Am Hoff plaza was relatively small when the pope spoke there early in the afternoon, it was enthusiastic, and wet, amid songs and chanting of his name in Italian.“Your visit honors us and makes us happy,” the nation’s president, Heinz Fischer, told the pope at the welcoming ceremony at the airport.The pope wanted to reach out to Austria’s ailing church, specifically acknowledging the pain caused by the sex scandals.“I want to say thank you to everyone who has suffered in these recent years,” the pope told reporters on the plane. “I know that the church in Austria has lived through difficult times, and so I am grateful to everyone-laity, the religious, priests-who remained faithful in all these difficulties for the church.”“I would not say all these difficulties have been overcome,” he added.“But I hope I can be of some help in healing the wounds.”As in the days of Noah...
