‘Dangerous’ Papal tour begins

Press, 4 March 1983, Page 8

‘Dangerous’ Papal tour begins

NZPA-Reuter San Jose

Pope John Paul, saying he came'to Central America to share the pain of its people, appealed yesterday for unity within the Catholic Church and again warned the clergy against becoming engaged in politics. After arriving in Costa Rica, the start of an eightday tour of the turbulent region, the Pope was driven in a special “Popemobile” of bullet-proof glass through streets lined with cheering crowds and 6000 police and guards. He then met Central American bishops at San Jose’s Catholic seminary. There, as in his airport arrival speech, he painted in graphic terms the problems Central America faced, and the reasons for his tour — the most delicate and dangerous, of his many foreign trips. The clamour of people tired of war and yearning for

peace had • found an echo within himself, he said at the airport. “It is the pain of the people that I have come to share ... in order to leave words of relief and hope, based on a necessary change of attitudes," he said. Costa Rica is one of the few Central American countries to be spared violence and turmoil. But the Pope will also visit El Salvador, torn by a bloody civil war, and Nicaragua, whose Leftist Government is at odds with the church.

Despite his reference to the need for change, the Pope made clear to the bishops at their meeting that he still opposed the clergy's involvement in political struggles. “It is not the quality of technicians or politicians that you as bishops can bring, for that is not your mission, but rather the quality of shepherds,” he told them.

He tacitly acknowledged the differences which existed in some countries between the church hierarchy and priests who felt compelled to support movements which tried to redress extreme social inequalities. The Pope also made an oblique criticism of Communist governments, which will not go unnoticed by the Leftist leaders of Nicaragua who have been less than enthusiastic about his visit to their country. “The Church rejects as inadequate and harmful the materialist values of capitalism just as it does the values of an equally materialistic collectivism, which oppress the dignity of man,” he said. On his first full day in Costa Rica today, the Pope will use the theme of peace at an open-air Mass, the first of many on his tour, to be celebrated before half a million people, one-sixth of the population.