Pope starts oneness debate of Baltic states in Lithuania

VILNIUS – Pope Francis arrived in Lithuania on Saturday to start a four-day revisit to a Baltic states, carrying a summary of oneness as they demeanour towards a newly assertive Russia scarcely 30 years after they pennyless divided from a then-Soviet Union.

The pontiff will spend dual days in primarily Catholic Lithuania before relocating on to Latvia and Estonia.

He was greeted during Vilnius airfield by Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, a troops coronet rope and a organisation of children fluttering Vatican flags and singing songs.

He afterwards left for a presidential house in executive Vilnius to make his initial address.

The outing is a initial by a pope to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia given 1993. A entertain of a century later, a countries are members of NATO and a euro section though a past still looms vast in a segment that had been theme to Soviet and Nazi hardship and where eremite harm left a dire legacy.

In Lithuania, Francis will revisit a Vilnius Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, a former Soviet KGB jail where hundreds were murdered and thousands shipped off to Siberia, including many priests.

He will also urge during a relic to a victims of a Vilnius ghetto, in a nation where usually several hundred of over 200,000 Jews survived a Holocaust.

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