Pope Francis departed from Bratislava Airport to Rome on Wednesday afternoon, wrapping up his four-day visit to Slovakia after completing his main Mass in Šaštín in the far west of the country shortly before noon. "Peter has walked on Slovak soil", said the Archbishop of Bratislava Stanislav Zvolenský in his address to Pope Francis on Wednesday. Archbishop Zvolenský thanked the pope for reminding everyone in Slovakia to be attentive to the poor and people in need.
"Dear brothers and sisters, the time has come to say goodbye to your country. I thanked God in this Eucharist for being allowed to come into your midst and to end my pilgrimage in the devoted embrace of this people and by jointly celebrating this important religious and state holiday of your patron saint, Our Lady of Sorrows," said Pope Francis in a public farewell to Slovakia after completing the main Mass in Šaštín. He thanked the bishops present, President Zuzana Čaputová, the civil authorities and everyone who contributed towards preparing his trip.
More than 50,000 people attended the main mass of Pope Francis' four-day visit to Slovakia in Šaštín on Wednesday, the public holiday marking the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the patron saint of Slovakia. Pope Francis has become one of the most distinguished figures to visit Šaštín, joining the ranks of Mother Theresa, who was there in 1987, and Pope John Paul II, who visited it in 1995.
As part of his four-day visit to Slovakia, the pope met the country's top officials, including President Zuzana Čaputová, Parliamentary Chairman Boris Kollár and Prime Minister Eduard Heger, who also saw him off at the airport. For this occasion Zuzana Čaputová was wearing black dress, as earlier that day her father, Štefan Strapák, died after a lengthy and serious illness.
In a key speech to Slovak religious and civil authorities in the Presidential Garden in Bratislava on Monday, the pope said that despite many tests, Slovakia as a country in the heart of Europe has managed to integrate and differentiate itself in a peaceful manner. The history of Slovakia predestines it to be a messenger of peace in the heart of Europe. While the struggle for supremacy continues on various fronts, Slovakia should continue to reaffirm its message of integration and peace, and Europe should be characterised by solidarity exceeding its borders that can bring it back to the centre of history.
Also on Monday, the pope commemorated Holocaust victims on the site of a former synagogue in Bratislava. At his meeting with representatives of the current Jewish community, he underlined that faith must not be used as a higher principle to justify discrimination and oppression. The pope noted that the site symbolises dark chapters in Slovak history, when anti-Semitic measures led not only to the trampling of rights under the WWII state but also the deportations and deaths of more than 100,000 Slovak Jews.
On Tuesday the pope visited Eastern Slovakia, where he celebrated the Greek Catholic rite in Prešov, met with young people in Košice and while speaking to Roma at the run-down borough of Lunik IX in Košice, the pontiff said that prejudices and judgements only work to increase the distances between people. It was precisely the visit to the Roma borough that received the most attention in the foreign press. The AP agency reported that in some ways Pope Francis' visit to the Lunik IX settlement brought home just how excluded the Roma are: Slovak police and soldiers lined up along tall fencing along the main route into the neighborhood, preventing residents who had not registered in advance from accessing the small seating area for the event. Despite the problematic optics, according to the AP, the visit was nevertheless a highlight of Francis' four-day pilgrimage to Hungary and Slovakia.
