Recalling Cold War-era crimes against his church, Pope John Paul II wrapped up a draining pilgrimage to Slovakia on Sunday by beatifying two clerics who were jailed and tortured under the former communist regime.
The frail 83-year-old pontiff looked rested and alert during an open-air Mass, but he cut short his brief welcome to at least 200,000 cheering pilgrims in the Slovak capital, where he elevated a martyred bishop and nun to the final step before sainthood.
In his homily, which he began in a slurred voice before handing it off to a cardinal, John Paul recalled "the sufferings endured by their terrible imprisonment."
"Both shine before us as radiant examples of faithfulness in times of harsh and ruthless religious persecution," he said. "Both faced up to an unjust trial and an ignoble condemnation — to torture, humiliation, solitude, death."
John Paul's 102nd foreign pilgrimage severely tested his health. The pope trembles from the effects of Parkinson's disease, and is wheeled around by aides on a throne-like chair because of hip and knee ailments.
Despite a faltering start to the trip, which began Thursday, the pontiff mustered enough strength to preside over Masses for several hundred thousand pilgrims in the central city of Banska Bystrica and the eastern city of Roznava, although aides read most of his speeches.
Sunday's final service had an appropriate backdrop: the sprawling Bratislava housing complex of Petrzalka, a bleak jumble of precast concrete high-rises built during communism and nicknamed the Slovak Bronx.
"It was built without churches by the totalitarian regime, which wanted it to be a city without God," Archbishop Jan Sokol said. A new Catholic church is now being built in the neighborhood.
The country's Catholic church suffered intense persecution under the communist regime, which ruled until 1989. Many priests were ordained in secret, and hundreds were imprisoned or sentenced to forced labor by the regime, which confiscated all church property.
"In the 1950s, I saw how they beat up a priest in a park. That was terrible," said Maria Dolinska, 89, a retiree in Bratislava.
"There were people who could not have their children baptized and had to go out of the city and have them baptized at smaller villages," she said. "Many people suffered."
Among them were Greek Catholic Bishop Vasil Hopko and Roman Catholic Sister Zdenka Schelingova, whose beatifications the Vatican hoped would serve both as a solemn reminder of oppression and a celebration of the church's ability to endure and even thrive.
Today, nearly seven in 10 of Slovakia's 5.4 million people are Catholics.
"I thank God because you have been able to safeguard, even in difficult times, your fidelity to Christ and to his church," John Paul told the crowd.
The Polish-born pope's fierce anti-communism stance is credited with helping to end communist rule across Central and Eastern Europe.
Both Bishop Hopko and Sister Schelingova personify the horrors inflicted on the church in the 1950s by the communists, who seized power in 1948.
Hopko was placed under house arrest and eventually spent 13 years behind bars. When his remains were exhumed in the 1970s, toxicology tests confirmed suspicions that his tormentors had poisoned him with arsenic for years.
Schelingova tried to help six priests escape from jail. It turned out to be a trap laid by the secret service of then-Czechoslovakia, and she suffered what local church leaders describe as "inhuman interrogation and cruel torture" in prison. She was released a few weeks before her death in 1955.
Although John Paul's pilgrimages have become increasingly difficult, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said he would not rule out further papal travel.
The Vatican is considering trips next year to Austria, France, Switzerland and Poland, although none has been confirmed. This was John Paul's third visit to Slovakia; he visited Croatia and Bosnia in the summer.