VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II gave a special audience Wednesday to 800 crewmen of the carrier USS Kennedy, visiting Italy after duty off the coast of Lebanon, and told them: 'God bless America.'
The pope praised the sailors for helping to relieve 'the excruciating suffering that Lebanon is undergoing.'
He then blessed them and their country.
'Thank you very much for coming,' he said. 'God bless your families. God bless your lives, your service. God bless America.'
The sailors burst into prolonged applause.
A U.S. Navy spokesman said the pope decided to invite the crewmen to a private audience when he learned there was no room for them at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Basilica.
John Paul has often expressed deep concern about the growing number of casualties in the civil war in Lebanon.
'We think the fact that the carrier bears the name of President John F. Kennedy also played a part,' a Navy source said.
The Kennedy, which has a crew of 5,800, arrived in Naples Monday for a one-week visit after its tour of duty in the Mediterranean off the Lebanese coast, where it provided support for U.S. Marines in Beirut.
The pope also went out of his way in his Jan. 11 audience to talk to 100 crewmen from the carrier Independence when it visited Italy after returning from waters off Lebanon.
John Paul received the officers and men of the Kennedy and a handful of wives in the baroque Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.
The pope also celebrated the end of Christian Unity Week with an ecumenical prayer service that for the first time included non-Roman Catholics participating in the ceremony.
With the pope in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls were Lutheran, Anglican and Orthodox ministers, who took turns reading from the Bible or leading the faithful in prayers for reuniting Christian churches.
Among the visiting prelates was the Rev. Christoph Meyer, the pastor of the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Rome which John Paul visited in December to mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther.
In the past, the Roman Catholic Church marked the end of Christian Unity Week with a prayer service to which Orthodox, Protestant and other Christian religious leaders were invited, Vatican sources said.
The non-Catholics, however, did not actively participate in the service by sharing Gospel readings and leading prayers with the pope, the sources said.
