VATICAN CITY—A determined Pope John Paul II completed his 96th foreign pastoral visit last week, spending five days in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. The Holy Father used the trip to praise those who remained faithful during the communist period and to build bridges to the Orthodox world.

In Bulgaria on May 24, in a gesture of goodwill toward Orthodoxy, John Paul presented Bulgarian Orthodox Patriarch Maxim with a gift from the heart of Rome—the Church of Sts. Vincent and Anastasius near the Trevi Fountain, which will be given to the Orthodox for their liturgical use.

The five-day visit was the first foreign journey since the Pope's condition noticeably worsened during Holy Week, with the Holy Father now unable to stand or walk without difficulty and with a frequent shortness of breath. For the first time an elevator brought the Pope from the airplane to the tarmac since he could not descend the stairs. The moving platform he uses at the Vatican was also employed.

John Paul did not deliver his addresses in Azerbaijani, but only read the first and last lines, leaving an aide to deliver the rest. It was not clear whether this was because speaking in general was too taxing or whether the Turkic language posed particular difficulties.

“I have come to Azerbaijan as an ambassador of peace. As long as I have breath within me I shall cry out: peace in the name of God,” said the Holy Father to an overwhelmingly Muslim country.

“No one has the right to call upon God to justify their own selfish interests,” he said, echoing themes he spoke about when he visited Kazakhstan and Armenia last fall in the aftermath of Sept. 11. “I ask religious leaders to reject all violence as offensive to the name of God.”

Azeri leaders were particularly keen to host the Pope after the Armenia visit. Ten years ago, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but is home to ethnic Armenians. The war killed 30,000 people in the early 1990s.

Turning to the Orthodox, which is the largest Christian church in Azerbaijan, the Holy Father thanked them for coming to the aid of Catholics during the communist period.

“When the fury of atheism was unleashed in this region, you welcomed the children of the Catholic Church who had lost their places of worship and their pastors,” he said.

John Paul used his 25 hours in Baku, the Azeri capital, as a moment to remember the evil of communism imposed when Russia annexed this small republic to the Soviet Union. That he did so in the Russian language itself, on former Soviet soil, was a historic moment.

“The universal Church pays tribute to all those who succeeded in remaining faithful to their baptismal commitments,” the Holy Father said. “I am thinking in particular of those who live permanently in this country and who experienced the tragedy of Marxist persecution and bore the consequences of their faithful attachment to Christ. Brothers and sisters, you saw your religion mocked as mere superstition, as an attempt to escape the responsibilities of engagement in history. For this reason you were regarded as second-class citizens and were humiliated and marginalized in many ways.

The Azeri Catholic community is the smallest the Pope has ever visited. Only 120 strong, the Catholic presence is so tiny that for the first time the Holy Father stayed overnight in a hotel, there being no nunciature, episcopal residence, convent or seminary to stay in.

The visit to Bulgaria was seen as a continuing effort to reach out to Orthodoxy. The Bulgarian Orthodox adopted the formula of their Greek brothers in not inviting the Pope, but not officially opposing the visit either. Indeed, the Greek experience seemed to have warmed expectations in Bulgaria, even if there were some misgivings on the Orthodox side.

Bulgaria seems to be part of what one observer called John Paul's “ring around Russia” strategy. Having visited Romania, Georgia, Greece, Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria in the last four years, the Holy Father is making it clear that Russia is the desired next step.

Apart from ecumenical considerations, Bulgarian authorities were quick to point out that the papal visit removed the “shame” of the so-called “Bulgarian connection” of would-be papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca. Despite widespread reports that the Bulgarian secret police was involved in the 1981 attempt, the Vatican has never implicated Bulgaria in the crime.