Benedict XVI

PRAGUE — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday recalled the evils of the communist era as he began a three-day pilgrimage to the Czech Republic, and he urged the fiercely secular nation to rediscover its Christian roots.

At a welcome ceremony at Prague's Ruzyne International Airport, the 82-year-old pope spoke of how the communist regime overthrown in 1989 ruthlessly persecuted the Roman Catholic Church.

"I join you and your neighbors in giving thanks for your liberation from these oppressive regimes," Benedict said, hailing the collapse of the Berlin Wall two decades ago this autumn as "a watershed in world history."

"Nevertheless, the cost of 40 years of political repression is not to be underestimated," the pope said. "A particular tragedy for this land was the ruthless attempt by the government of that time to silence the voice of the church.

"Now that religious freedom has been restored, I call upon all the citizens of this republic to rediscover the Christian traditions which have shaped their culture," he added.

Scores of pilgrims poured into Prague for the nation's first papal visit in a dozen years. But most Czechs seemed to shrug it off as irrelevant and some were openly hostile.

"It's just a waste of money," said Kveta Tomasovicova, 56, who works at Prague's National Library. "At a time of economic crisis, when our salaries are going down, the visit is a useless investment."

Even the Vatican acknowledges the 13th foreign trip of Benedict's papacy casts the pope as an apostle among the apostate.

Secularism is so ingrained in the modern Czech Republic, "the practice of religion is reduced to a minority," said the pope's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

In 1991, 4.5 million of the country's 10 million people said they belonged to a church. In 2001, a census showed that number had plunged to 3.3 million.

Under communism, which ended with the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the church was brutally repressed.

The regime, which seized power in 1948 in what was then Czechoslovakia, confiscated all church-owned property and persecuted many priests. Churches were then allowed to function only under the state's control and supervision.