PLOVDIV, Bulgaria (Reuters) - Pope John Paul, ending a trip which has tested his health, said on Sunday the shared suffering of Orthodox and Catholics under communism should prod them to forget their painful past and seek unity.
On the last day of a five-day trip to Ajerbaijan and Bulgaria, the Pope traveled to Bulgaria's second city and Catholic heartland to put three priests killed by communists in 1952 on the road to sainthood.
The 82-year-old Pope sat through much of a long ceremony in the main square of Plovdiv, trembling and showing the signs of fatigue and suffering which have marked most of the trip.
Kamen Vichev, Iosafat Shishkov and Pavel Dzhidzhov were convicted at a show trial in which 40 Bulgarian Catholic priests were charged with being spies of the Vatican.
They died beside Bishop Evgeni Bossilkov, who was beatified by the Pope in 1998 and is considered the first Catholic to be martyred as a direct result of the Stalinist regimes installed in Eastern Europe after World War Two.
In his homily the Pope, wearing gold and white vestments, held out another olive branch to the Orthodox Church, which split from Western Christianity 1,000 years ago.
He said that in honoring the three clerics he felt bound to recall Orthodox victims of totalitarian repression.
"This tribute of fidelity to Christ brought together the two church communities in Bulgaria, even to the supreme witness (martyrdom)," he said.
"This gesture cannot fail to have an ecumenical character and significance," he said.
Across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union communist regimes preached atheism and persecuted Catholics, closing churches and confiscating properties which have been gradually returned since the revolutions of 1989 paved the path to democracy.
NO LONGER READS WHOLE HOMILY
As he has on most of the trip, the Pope read only parts of his homily, delegating someone else to read it to conserve his strength and save time.
Aides have begun reading his homilies recently because the Pope's Parkinson's disease has made it increasingly difficult for him to pronounce words clearly and be understood.
But he appeared to have grown in strength in the course of his trip and seemed alert and lively at his engagements on Saturday evening.
Vatican officials say he is coping well with the strain, despite clear difficulties moving. Parkinson's disease restricts his mobility and makes one hand tremble uncontrollably.
Despite his weakness, the Pope has said he wants to carry on to his death, as tradition dictates, rejecting suggestions he should resign.
Trips to Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Poland and Croatia are in his diary for the next four months.
The Pope returns to Italy late on Sunday to ready himself for a meeting with President Bush on Tuesday.
Bulgaria is the latest predominantly Orthodox country the Pope has visited. He has made unity with the Orthodox Church a goal of his papacy, but stormy relations with the Russian Orthodox Church have prevented him from realizing his stated dream of visiting Moscow.
Sunday's event was the first Roman Catholic mass in public for the Pope on this trip. On other days, he has reached out to Orthodoxy by paying homage to Bulgaria's patron saints, praying with its religious chief and visiting a national shrine.