Pope John Paul II visits Slovakia

VATICAN CITY -- A frail Pope John Paul II travels to Slovakia this week, putting him at the center of an intensifying campaign to rally Europeans against threats to traditional Roman Catholic family values.\nThe four-day trip beginning Thursday is a physical test for the 83-year-old pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and crippling hip and knee ailments.\nJohn Paul has appeared short of breath and his voice has been weak during public appearances over the past month, but he has not missed any appointments. He has remained seated in a throne-like chair wheeled by aides.\n"This visit will surely be his last in Slovakia because of his age and his health," Archbishop Jan Sokol, the top prelate in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. "It's bittersweet -- but such is life."\nHundreds of thousands of people are expected to turn out for the pope's four open-air Masses during his swing around Slovakia, a mainly Catholic country that John Paul has visited twice before. He will also beatify a bishop and a nun who were imprisoned under communist rule, declaring them martyrs of the faith.\nMore than 5,000 police have been assigned to provide security, and authorities said Tuesday they were investigating a death threat made against the pope. They declined to provide details.\nIn August, a judge in Bosnia sentenced a 23-year-old Muslim man to six months in prison for sending an e-mail threatening to kill John Paul during a visit to Croatia in June. The man said it was a practical joke.\nThe pope looks to Slovakia, his native Poland and other Catholic countries scheduled to join an expanded European Union next year to help balance the heavily secular trends in Western Europe that have led to liberal abortion laws and increasing legal recognition of homosexual unions, subject of a recent Vatican condemnation.\nThe Vatican has also not given up its efforts to convince the EU that its new constitution should include mention of the continent's Christian heritage, although its attempts have so far been rebuffed.\n"It is from these (Christian) roots that European peoples received the inspiration that led them to reach the depth of man, his intangible dignity, the fundamental equality of all, the universal right to justice and peace," the pope said in a message Sunday to a gathering of religious leaders in Germany.\nSlovakia has not been immune.\nIn July, parliament approved a law to make abortion legal until the 24th week of pregnancy, instead of the current 12 weeks. Slovakia's president vetoed the measure, demanding that a court first rule on it.\nThe trip will be John Paul's 102nd foreign tour and comes a month before the Vatican is planning major celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary of his election as pope.