LATAM: Pope Heads Home after Triumphant Tour

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Marquez

CARACAS, Feb 13 1996 (IPS) - Pope John Paul II’s tour of Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Venezuela was a great success, helping reinforce his leadership over the 500 million Latin American Catholics.

During his visit, the Pope stressed the distance between the official Catholic Church policy and Liberation Theology in politics and social issues, especially the Vatican’s iron opposition to more liberal views of sexuality and family life.

John Paul II, greeted by thousands of faithful wherever he went, reasserted his personal leadership over the two thousand year old church at the ripe old age of 75 – when most cardinals and archbishops retire.

In his 17 years as Pope, John Paul has travelled abroad 69 times, including 14 trips to Latin American and the Caribbean. The tour which ended Sunday took him to four countries much changed since his previous visits in the mid-eighties.

At that time, Central America was dominated by armed conflicts fed by the cold war between the superpowers, while Venezuela still had a prosperous oil economy, feeding antivalues and consumerism.

Whilst en route to Guatemala, the Pope commented that “with the fall of communism Liberation Theology also fell.” This branch of Catholicism supported the armed struggle costing the lives of many priests mostly in Central America.

In Guatemala – the only regional nation still living a civil war – the Pope concentrated his preaching on messages of peace, speaking out against the “sects” and evangelical creeds which are fighting for the faithful.

The Pope cancelled his meeting with indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace Prizewinner in 1992, but was pleased to be received by the Catholic president, Alvaro Arzu, instead of the evangelical general Efrain Rios Montt, who was in power in 1983.

In Nicaragua, John Paul II saw most change, for 300,000 people attended the mass in an appropriate manner in contrast with the yelled revolutionary slogans and raised fist salutes given the anti-communist Pope in 1983.

Furthermore, President Violeta Chamorro renamed the square where the 1983 mass took place after the religious leader.

In El Salvador, where the Church has lost most blood in the fight for peace, thousands of Catholics called for the beatification of archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, killed in mid mass in 1980.

They also spoke of “more bishops like him” like his deceased sucessor Arturo Rivera y Damas, who contrast with the recently appointed archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Saenz Lacalle of the conservative Catholic Opus Dei.

John Paul II prayed at the tombs of Romero and Rivera y Damas, but was not very critical of the economic situation of the Salvadorans, which several bishops classed as desperate.

Meanwhile, the Pope called for “no more war” amongst Central Americans in San Salvador, blaming “Marxism and unrestrained capitalism” for stoking up the conflict.

In Venezuela, he was less overtly political, referring more especially to the economic and social dramas of the Latin Americans, and before returning to Rome he expressed his opinions on moral, sexual and family issues.

At the gates of the worst prison in Caracas, the Pope demanded for humane treatment for the inmates, he also told a meeting of 2,500 business leaders that they should work for a “supportive economy,” as the “system of goods accumulation causes a great abyss between States and citizens.”

Now the cold war is over, the Church supports resistence to structural adjustment and the Latin American bishops complain of the negative social consequences of economic liberalisation.

The Pope strongly criticised the Catholic sectors commited to Liberation Theology, though Father Juan Vives of the Latin American Human Rights Foundation said this “is more alive than ever.”

Vives said it was deplorable that in Latin America “the popular christian sectors are persecuted and martyred fighting for justice, but they have not been given the same recognition as the victims of the cold war.”

Even more bluntly, Jesuit priest Jose Ignacio Rey said “it is unlikely that this Pope, looking from the perspective of the rich countries, will be able to understand what is happening in Latin America. Its not his fault, but it is difficult to talk of poverty if you don’t share it,” he added.

However, this did nothing to change the speeches the Pope prepared in Rome.

John Paul II spent his last day in the region telling 100,000 young people to withstand “the temptation of the idols of power, money and pleasure.”

In this “Youth meeting” he stressed the message of the “‘unborn child,” whose “voice” was heard calling through the loudspeakers: “Protect me, because I am the most defenceless of the defenceless.”

The Pope is ardently anti-abortion or any form of birth control, saying “the family must be founded on the indissoluble sacrament of marriage and open itself generously to the gift of life.”

John Paul II also showed great physical resistence on the tour, for though he appeared tired at times, he made long trips in the “popemobiles,” took nine planes, four helicopters, presented 22 messages and held six masses.