A worker, seen from the stage, cleans an area of the Kosevo Stadium on Wednesday as final preparations are made ahead of Pope Francis' visit in Sarajevo on Saturday.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — For centuries, Sarajevo was known as “Europe’s Jerusalem,” where Christianity, Islam and Judaism lived in harmony. In the 1990s, the city became synonymous with religious enmity, as its Christian Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosniaks plunged into a calamitous cycle of warfare.

Pope Francis hopes to restore some of the earlier legacy Saturday during his visit to this city that, two decades ago, seared itself on the world’s imagination with images of Serbian sniper fire and bombs killing innocent civilians.

The majority-Muslim city is gearing up to give the pontiff an ecstatic embrace. Already Francis teacups are being sold on souvenir stands next to the statue of St. John Paul II on the main square. Muslim carpenters have crafted a wooden throne for the pope to sit on and Catholic craftsmen an altar for the Mass he will perform. In Srebrenica, the scene of Europe’s worst carnage since World War II, a mixed choir of Muslim and Christian Orthodox children is practicing a song of love they will sing to the pope.

The city’s mosque, synagogue, Roman Catholic cathedral and Eastern Orthodox Church stand less than 100 yards away from one another. But that interfaith harmony was blown apart by the war fought between the country’s ethnic Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks from 1992 to 1995. The conflict left 100,000 dead and displaced half of the population.

Two decades later, the wounds still fester, and the problems remain unsolved. Bosnia’s Christian Orthodox Serbs want a breakaway state; Muslim Bosniaks want a unified country; and Roman Catholic Croats want their own autonomous region.

“I am coming to you with God’s help to strengthen the Catholics in their faith, to give my support to the ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and above all, to encourage peaceful coexistence in your country,” Pope Francis told Bosnians in a video message this week.

With this mission, Francis is following in the footsteps of St. John Paul II, who tried to visit Sarajevo during the war to call for an end to fighting.

The trip was called off for security reasons. But John Paul came in 1997 to celebrate an emotional Mass in Sarajevo’s main stadium, attracting thousands of Catholic Croats to the city for the first time since the fighting ended. John Paul returned to Bosnia again in 2003 — this time to the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, where he apologized for World War II crimes committed by Catholics against Serbs.

His inspirational plea for peace prompted Sarajevans to place his statue on the main square last year.