World unites to pay tribute to Pope

VATICAN CITY, Monday (AFP) - From Catholic bastions in Latin America, Europe and Africa, to Hindu-majority India, Orthodox Greece and mainly Muslim Indonesia, the world united Sunday to mourn the passing of Pope John Paul II, eulogizing him as a towering figure and a messenger of peace and mutual tolerance.

Britain and the United States led the West's tributes to a pope who played a crucial role in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe.

"The world has lost a religious leader who was revered across people of all faiths and none," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"He was an inspiration, a man of extraordinary faith, dignity and courage. He never wavered, never flinched, in the struggle for what he thought was good and right."

US President George W. Bush, called the pope, who died Saturday, "one of history's great moral leaders".

"The Catholic Church has lost its shepherd, the world has lost a champion of human freedom, and a good and faithful servant of God has been called home," Bush, a Methodist who had clashed with the pope over his war on Iraq, said from the White House.

Bush underscored John Paul II's role in launching a democratic revolution that swept eastern Europe and remembered him as an ardent advocate of "a culture of life," one of Bush's favoured themes in the deeply religious United States.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the pontiff "a tireless advocate of peace, a true pioneer in interfaith dialogue and a strong force for critical self-evaluation by the Church itself."

Across Latin America, home to nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, leaders announced official days of mourning and recalled with emotion the impact his papal visits had on their countries.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared an official three-day period of mourning, underlining "the pope's support for Arab causes and the Palestinian people".

Egyptian Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi - seen as the highest authority in Sunni Islam - said: "The death of the pope is a great loss for the Catholic Church and the Muslim world."

Majority Muslim Albania also decreed a day of national mourning for Monday and its president, Alfred Moisiu, lauded John Paul II for helping Albanians "regain their faith in God and religious institutions after long years of communist dictatorship.

In Hindu-majority India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday called the pontiff a "people's Pope" who especially endeared himself to Indians when he initiated the process of granting sainthood to Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, who founded the Calcutta-based Missionaries of Charity that cared for the sick and poor in the eastern Indian city.

While Russia joined the world in mourning the death of Pope John Paul II Sunday, few public figures in a country that the pontiff never got his fervent wish to visit mentioned his key role in ending the Cold War.

President Vladimir Putin hailed the pope as "an outstanding figure of our times, with whom a whole era is associated."

"I retain the warmest memories of (my) meetings with the pontiff. He was a wise and responsive man, open to dialogue," the Interfax news agency quoted the statement as saying.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, expressed grief at the death of the pontiff and voiced hope "the coming of a new era in the life of the Roman Catholic Church will help restore relations of mutual respect and brotherly Christian love between our Churches," in a letter to the Holy See posted on the Church's website.

The spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew I, also hailed him as a "man of vision" who worked for improved ties between the long-divided Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Italy's President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said that Italians were mourning "the loss of a father."

Spain, a mainly Catholic nation, expressed its "profound grief," as Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the demise of the pontiff "represents the loss of one of the most towering world figures in recent history."

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said John Paul II was a great modern figure who played a decisive role in ending decades of division and oppression in Europe.

Catholics and Protestants, rival and often fractious communities in Northern Ireland, also united in prayer to remember John Paul II as a moral pillar for humanity and a messenger of peace.

The head of Ireland's Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Sean Brady, said the pontiff was in advance of his time and his 26-year papacy would —eave an "immense" legacy for the world.

Church of Ireland Primate Robin Eames, the senior Protestant official in Northern Ireland, said the pope had shown "immense personal courage in fulfilling his duties" as his health failed.

President Jacques Chirac said all of France was in mourning while German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said that John Paul II had "changed our world" and played a crucial role in the development of a peaceful Europe.