Pope Czech Republic

The pontiff pointed out the historic importance of Christianity and democracy in Europe.

Speaking to a crowd estimated at more than 120,000 Benedict said "I join you and your neighbors in giving thanks for your liberation from those oppressive regimes."

"If the collapse of the Berlin Wall marked a watershed in world history, it did all the more so for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, enabling them to take their rightful place as sovereign actors in the concert of nations," the pontiff said.

The visit to the Czech Republic is the first by the head of the Roman Catholic Church since the collapse of communism in 1989.

The visit by Benedict is a sojourn to the most secular country in Europe and comes shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the peaceful coup which toppled the communist regime of former Czechoslovakia.

Religious beliefs, and especially their display, were banned in communist Czechoslovakia, which viewed the Church, and religion as a whole, as an enemy of the people. The regime kept priests under police surveillance and suppressed Catholic publications and associations.

On the sidelines of the papal visit, Vatican and Czech representatives also discussed the sensitive issue of returning Church property confiscated by the communists after World War II. A large number of churches, chapels, monasteries, agricultural land and artwork were nationalized by the Czech regime at the time.

Pontiff confronts widely atheist public

The pope, however, faces an uphill struggle to bring a religious revival to the country, despite the fall of communism.

Nearly 60 percent of Czechs do not identify with any religion, according to a census taken in 2001, up from 39 percent a decade earlier, putting the Czech Republic in stark contrast to neighboring and deeply devout Poland. The percentage of believers, on the other hand, dropped sharply between 1991 and 2001 from almost 44 percent to 32 percent, according to figures from the Czech Statistics Office.

That has not deterred the pontiff, however, who said prior to his visit that "after going through the dramas of the past century, (the Czech Republic) needs, like the rest of the continent, to rediscover the reasons for faith and for hope."

Church data indicates that there are also more people of faith than the government statistics show, according to Jana Michalkova, a spokeswoman for the diocese in Litomerice, some 80 kilometers north of Prague. But, Michalkova admits that half of the churches and chapels in her area were in very poor condition and some Sunday masses "served just one or two people."

Benedict not visiting former ethnic German region

The pope's agenda in the Czech Republic includes stopovers in Prague, the southeastern city of Brno and Stara Boleslav just outside Prague.

He will not be visiting the country's western Sudeten region, which was once mostly inhabited by ethnic Germans, who were driven from their homes and fled to Germany and Austria after World War II.

The expulsion of the ethnic German Catholics only accelerated the decline of religion in the post-war era and has been a frequent thorn in relations between the Czech Republic and Germany.

gb/dpa/AFP

Editor: Andreas Illmer