Ukrainian media upbeat on Pope's visit

The Papal visit has been heading tv bulletins

On the eve of the Pope's controversial visit to Ukraine the local media have been giving widespread - and largely upbeat - coverage of the visit and programme.

Television and newspaper coverage has been informative rather than polemical, stressing the visit's organisational aspects, including transport and security arrangements.

All national TV channels and newspapers have reported extensively on the preparations for the visit - the reconstruction of the stadiums outside Kiev and Lviv, where the Pope is to hold services, the distribution of invitations and attempts to foil ticket touts.

The Pope will hold services in Kiev and Lviv

On Thursday and Friday the visit led almost every news bulletin on every TV channel.

Standstill

The Lviv papers Ekspres and Vysokyy Zamok have both predicted that the city will come to a virtual standstill as up to two million pilgrims pour in during the visit.

It will show the world that we are a civilised society which respects normal human values

Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko

In Kiev, the mass-circulation Kievskiye Vedomosti reassured its readers that the visit was costing the government only $600,000, with the church meeting the rest of the bill.

Attention has also focused on the quirkier aspects of the preparations.The authorities in the western city of Lviv, the Pope's second port of call, have banned tobacco and alcohol advertising along the Pope's route.

Miners from the eastern city of Donetsk are to present the pope with a figurine made from coal, recalling his origins in Poland's mining heartland.

Protests

Demonstrations against the visit by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), have been widely reported, but neither the television nor the press has given space to the reasons behind them nor to the conflict between the churches.

Soem Orthodox believers have been staging angry protests

In an interview on Friday with Kiev's largest daily, Fakty i Kommentarii, Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko compared the visit with organising several summits at once.

If it went off smoothly, he said, "It will show the world that we are a civilised society which respects normal human values".

"The visit is a great honour for Ukraine, not only on the part of the Vatican but the world community.

"It is one of the most important events in Ukraine's foreign political life, and we are absolutely ready for it".

Saturation coverage

Mr Zlenko admitted that he found it hard to understand the opposition of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, he noted, the church's position was not shared by the Russian state.

The importance the government attaches to the visit can be seen by the saturation coverage promised by the state media.

From the Pope's arrival on Saturday until his departure for Rome on Wednesday, the first channel of state television, will carry an unprecedented 18 hours of live coverage of the four masses he is scheduled to celebrate in Kiev and Lviv and his meetings with the president, political and social figures, religious leaders and young people.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.