Bogota Celebrations

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 13

Bogota Celebrations

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) BOGOTA (Colombia), August 20.

Bogota, the mountain capital of Colombia, is feverishly rushing its preparations to receive Pope Paul on Thursday as the climax to its week of solemn celebration of the Roman Catholic faith.

The celebration brings together the Pope, 20 cardinals, 300 bishops, thousands of priests and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world. A similar congress was last

held in Bombay in 1964. Colombian newspapers yesterday protested against what they called the poor facilities for journalists covering the congress, and complained that their own and foreign reporters were being obstructed by troops and police.

Thousands of steel-helmeted soldiers with rifles and police carrying long clubs patrolled the congress site when it opened, and reporters were frequently stopped. In an opinion poll among foreign correspondents covering the congress, the Liberal “El Tiempo” quotes a Mexican journalist as saying: “This is not a eucharistic camp, it is a concentration camp.” In Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Vatican officials are both hopeful and anxious about Pope Paul’s visit to Bogota, the first to Latin America by a reigning Pontiff. There is hope that it will herald a new era for the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America by identifying it more closely with the continent’s social problems, but there is also anxiety that it may set off a chain of unforeseen reactions in a situation seen from Italy as tense and explosive. The Pope yesterday suspended all private audiences

to prepare for his visit At his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo he was putting the final touches to the speeches and messages he will deliver in the Colombian capital. The Pope has made clear that he will not shirk the problems of poverty and social inequality in the South American continent Setting the keynote for his trip, he told pilgrims to Rome: "The prosperious and the politicians should take steps to end the serious division between inert privilege and grinding misery.”