Ayatollah tells off ‘Mr Pope’

Press, 5 August 1980, Page 8

Ayatollah tells off ‘Mr Pope’

NZPA-Reuter Teheran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny has rebuked Pope John Paul II for failing to condemn what he alleged was police torture of arrested Iranian students in the United States. .

“Why doesn’t Mr Pope ask any questions about these boys and girls who, at this moment, are chained in prison and under torture?” he told the Papal emissary, Archbishop Hilarion Capucci.

“Does Mr Pope know that at the . moment our young people are chained and handcuffed, and some of them are unconscious with broken ribs?” asked Ayatollah Khomeiny, referring to nearly 200 Iranian students arrested after a demonstration in Washington on July 27. He upbraided the Pope, for sending Archbishop Capucci, with an appeal not to .close Catholic schools in Iran, while failing to intervene with President. Carter over the students. 7 . ■ ■ ■ .7

“I wish that a messenger had been sent with a ■ letter, to Carter .. . our youths are passing out under the boots of the slaughterers of Carter and the. United States,” the Ayatollah said. He also alleged that the pro-Khomeiny : students were being; held in solitary confinement.

Archbishop Capucci, the former Greek Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem, visited Ayatollah Khomeiny to plead the case for 14 Catholic schools in Iran.

The Andisheh School has been occupied by revolutionary guards since July 16 and 13 Catholic priests'detained on charges of spying for Israel.

The Ayatollah said the schools could reopen if they were genuine teaching centres and not “nests of spies”.