* About 120,000 greet pope at Czech airfield
* Visit aimed to draw Czechs back to Church
* Pope urges faithful to look to God in struggle for freedom
By Michael Kahn
BRNO, Czech Republic, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Some 120,000
worshippers turned out at an airfield on Sunday for mass led by
Pope Benedict as part of his visit aimed at drawing Czechs and
other secular Europeans back to the Church.
Waving national flags from several neighbouring countries,
the crowd heard the pope urge people gathered in the country's
second-biggest city to keep God in their lives.
Many in the crowd came from nearby Poland, Slovakia and
Hungary to greet the pope in the Czech Republic, where centuries
of religious wars and decades of brutal Communist repression
have made it one of the world's most secular countries.
"History has demonstrated the absurdities to which man
descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices
and actions, and how hard it is to build a society inspired by
the values of goodness, justice and fraternity, because the
human being is free and his freedom remains fragile," the pope
said.
The three-day visit is his first trip to the central
European country in 12 years and precedes the 20th anniversary
in November of the 'Velvet Revolution' that ended decades of
Communist totalitarian rule.
The Church has struggled with faltering appeal in a nation
where about a third of the country's 10.5 million residents
identify themselves as Catholic.
"Your country, like other nations, is experiencing cultural
conditions that often present a radical challenge to faith and
therefore also to hope," the pope said.
Unlike in neighbouring Poland, most leaders of the
Czechoslovak state that emerged from the collapse of the
Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 were avowedly secular, or more
in tune with the reformist tradition of the medieval priest Jan
Hus -- a heretic for the Catholic Church.
Four decades of Communist rule starting in 1948 suppressed
religious activity, and the government closed monasteries and
jailed many priests and believers.
"Even though not many of us in the Czech Republic are
Catholic so it is important to show our faith," said Matous, a
27-year-old from Olomouc among the crowd greeting the pope. "We
want to celebrate mass with the head of our Church."
But many local residents took advantage of sunny weather to
head to their cottages.
Radek Jasek of Brno said he considered it like any other big
festival or concert that takes place in town.
"The people seem to enjoy it so as long as I know in advance
that the highway will be closed I can avoid the crowds," he
said.
Benedict was due to celebrate another mass on Monday in
Stara Boleslav, north of Prague, where the Czech patron saint,
Wenceslas, was murdered in the 10th century. The St. Wenceslas
Day on Monday is a national holiday in the country.
(Writing by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Charles Dick)
