Pope travels to the heart of Europe to appeal for peace and to boost his dwindling flock

VATICAN CITY — (AP) — Pope Francis called Thursday for Europe to be a beacon of peace amid war and a welcome home for migrants as he arrived Thursday in the heart of the continent to encourage the dwindling Catholic flock in onetime bastions of Christianity.

Francis landed Thursday morning amid blustery weather in Luxembourg, the European Union's second-smallest country and its richest per capita. The visit came after the 87-year-old pope canceled his audiences in recent days because of a slight flu.

Francis seemed in good form, though he skipped his traditional walk down the plane aisle to greet journalists during the flight from Rome.

“I don’t feel up to the trip. I’ll greet you from here,” he said, referring to the trip down the aisle. The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said the decision was due to the aircraft having just a single aisle and the short duration of the flight, and was not a reflection of Francis’ health.

Francis was in Luxembourg for just a few hours before flying onto Belgium, where he will stay through the weekend. There too immigration and peace — with a war raging on European soil — are expected to be on the agenda. Francis is also expected to meet with survivors of clergy sexual abuse, given the Belgian church's wretched record.

In his opening remarks to Luxembourg government authorities and the diplomatic corps, Francis recalled the country's position as a geographic crossroads in Europe, invaded during both World Wars and keenly aware of the “quarrels and wars that have been caused by exaggerated forms of nationalism and pernicious ideologies.”

"Ideology is always the enemy of democracy," he said, deviating from his speech. “Luxembourg can show everyone the advantages of peace as opposed to the horrors of war,” he added.

Francis also praised the country for its tradition of opening its doors to foreigners and said it was a model for Europe. But he urged it to use its wealth to help poorer nations so their people aren’t forced to flee to seek better economic opportunities in Europe.

“This is one way to ensure a decrease in the number of those forced to emigrate, often in inhumane and dangerous conditions,” he said. “Let us not forget that having wealth includes responsibility.”

A landlocked country surrounded by Belgium, France and Germany, Luxembourg traces its Christian heritage to the 4th century and it was once a staunchly Catholic country. But barely half of Luxembourg’s 660,000 inhabitants, or 52.6%, are now native citizens. More than a third come from other EU nations like Portugal, and about 10% from outside the EU.

The trip is a much-truncated version of the 10-day tour St. John Paul II made through Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1985, during which the Polish pope delivered 59 speeches or homilies and was greeted by hundreds of thousands of adoring faithful.

In Luxembourg alone, John Paul drew a crowd of some 45,000 people to his Mass, or some 10% of the population at the time.

Even then, the head of the Catholic Church faced indifference and even hostility to core Vatican teachings on contraception and sexual morals, opposition that has only increased over time. Those secular trends and the crisis over clergy abuse have helped lead to the decline of the church in the region, with monthly Mass attendance in the single digits and plummeting ordinations of new priests.

Nevertheless, the narrow streets surrounding the Dukal Palace were packed with well-wishers who braved the morning rain to catch a glimpse of the pope in his popemobile.

Francis urged them to have more babies. “I won’t say ‘more babies and fewer doggies,’ that I only say in Italy,” he quipped. “But for you: more children.”

Francis will speak to the country’s Catholic priests and nuns later Thursday. The venue is the late-Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was built in the early 1600s by Francis’ own Jesuit order and stands as a monument to Christianity’s long and central place in European history.

In Luxembourg, Francis has a top ally and friend in the lone cardinal from the country, Jean-Claude Hollerich, a fellow Jesuit.

In an article this week in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Hollerich said migration and the influx of people of other faiths or no faith accounted for the changes and challenges confronting the church in Luxembourg today.

“In 1970, 96% of the people from Luxembourg declared themselves Catholic. We can say that Christianity characterized the identity of the country,” Hollerich wrote. “But today, you cannot say the same.”

“We can no longer look back in the hope of restoring that church that existed a half-century ago. We have to try to find traces of God in the current secularization,” he wrote.

Hollerich, whom Francis made a cardinal in 2019, has taken on a leading role in the pope’s multi-year church reform effort as the “general rapporteur” of his big synod, or meeting, on the future of the Catholic Church.

In that capacity, Hollerich has helped oversee local, national and continental-wide consultations of rank-and-file Catholics and synthesized their views into working papers for bishops and other delegates to discuss at their Vatican meetings, the second session of which opens next week.

Last year, in another sign of his esteem for the progressive cardinal, Francis appointed Hollerich to serve in his kitchen cabinet, known as the Council of Cardinals. The group of nine prelates from around the globe meets several times a year at the Vatican to help Francis govern.

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Casert reported from Brussels. AP researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.

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