Even nuns are searched

Press, 12 September 1984, Page 10

Even nuns are searched

NZPA-Reuter Montreal Security is so tight during Pope John Paul’s tour of Canada that the police are frisking nuns. At Quebec airport photographers had to shoot film to prove that their cameras were not concealing guns or explosives. The police searched nuns going into the archbishop’s residence in Quebec City. A reporter covering the Pope’s visit to Quebec Cathedral had to have a police escort to go to the lavatory. When he left the cubicle the officer checked the cistern for explosives. No detail is too insignificant for the 27,000 officers in Canada’s biggest security action since Quebec separatists launched a wave of bombings and kidnappings in the 19605. They are especially alert in Montreal where three Parisian tourists were killed last week by a bomb in the railway station. Rail officials had received letters threatening the Pope, who is staying in the archbishop’s house near the station.

Chief Superintendent Jean Poirier, the officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police overseeing security, said that the bomb had served as a timely warning. The police are welding man-hole covers along routes being taken by the bullet-proof “Popemobile.” Mail-boxes, once a favourite bomb target for Quebec separatists, are also being removed. Security men, guns bulging under their jackets, ride aboard the “Popemobile.” Just before the Pope arrived in Quebec’s Cathedral Square a police truck rumbled past carrying a huge cauldron-like container on the back. “That’s for putting bombs in,” a police officer explained. The police, reporters, and apparently the Pope were jolted on Monday at the start of his 12-day tour. Just as he went on his knees to kiss the ground at Quebec airport, a heart-stopping shot boomed out across the tarmac. It was the start of a 21-gun salute, but even the Pope looked surprised by the sudden roar. One Vatican official called the salvo “rather poor taste for a man of peace.” All countries playing host to the Pope have given security priority since May, 1981, when a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, seriously wounded the Pontiff in St Peter’s Square, Rome. In May, 1982, a Spanish priest lunged at him with a knife during a visit to Portugal. On his trip to Asia in May this year a young South Korean jumped out of the crowd in Seoul and fired a toy gun. Canadian security men look at their most nervous when Pope John Paul, who is in his element in milling crowds, suddenly decides to stop to hug a child. Mr Poirier spent months studying films of the Pope’s previous travels to get a feeling for how he reacted so that the police could keep one step ahead of him. The Pope often falls way behind schedule. Mr Poirier has told the circle of security men assigned to constantly guard the pontiff, “He is his own person and if something takes his fancy, he’ll go there.” After his arrival in Montreal, the Pope moved on to the city’s shrine of Saint Anne, where he was greeted by crowds which included 10,000 Canadian Indians and Eskimos. They cheered him when he backed their demands for greater self-determination and confessed to blunders by missionaries who had converted them to Christianity.