Thousands greet pope at sacred Polish shrine

CZESTOCHOWA, POLAND — Pope Francis blessed hundreds of thousands of faithful Thursday at a shrine in Poland, paying tribute to a beloved native son, St. John Paul II, honoring the countless “ordinary yet remarkable” Poles who defiantly clung to their faith during Soviet-bloc communism and establishing this pontiff’s drawing power in a country where being Catholic is often equated with being Polish.

Francis, who had never set foot in Eastern Europe before this week’s five-day pilgrimage to Poland, gazed in apparent awe for several minutes as he studied the Jasna Gora monastery shrine’s iconic image of the so-called Black Madonna. The faces of Mary and Baby Jesus in the icon — an object of veneration starting in the 14th century — are blackened by centuries of varnish and candle soot.

Pilgrimages to Jasna Gora, often by faithful trekking long distances, are part of many Polish Catholics’ identity and upbringing.

Polish church officials said as many as 600,000 people flocked to the outdoor Mass at the monastery. In the evening, local church organizers in Krakow said another 500,000 faithful — young people from all around the world — cheered Francis at a pep rally on a meadow in the southern city.

Vatican officials and police declined to offer any estimates of the crowd’s size.

During the pep rally, people sang and danced to lively tunes, waving flags from places as different as Tennessee and Turkey.