Pope praises Trinidad harmony

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 10

Pope praises Trinidad harmony

NZPA-Reuter Port of Spain Pope John Paul has ended a tough tour of Latin America, during which he declared that Catholics should fight injustice but reject anti-Christian ideas and violence.

The Pope, who was returning to Rome today, finished the trip in Trinidad

and Tobago, an island nation off Venezuela, and praised what he called its achievement of racial harmony.

He told 30,000 people in the capital, Port of Spain, that the achievement should give hope to the world at large. After his 12-day tour

covering four countries and nearly 30,000 km the 64-year-old Pope seemed tired and his voice was hoarse. In Peru, he suffered a slight fever. At Ayacucho, in the Andean heartland of the civil strife plaguing the country, he appealed for the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas to

end a four-year-old war that has cost 4000 lives. The Maoists’ responded by bombing pylons and blacking out the Peruvian capital, Lima, during the Pope’s visit. Throughout his trip, which also ■ took him to Venezuela and Ecuador, the Pope firmly told priests and

nuns how they should confront Latin America’s poverty. ‘‘Always proclaim the truth of the Church’s teachings and not passing ideologies,” he said in Lima. Another central theme of his trip was the defence of the rights of Latin American Indians.